Elon has received billions from the US government across his companies. It'd be a slap in the face to the entire US population for Tesla to have a 100% proprietary charging network when we helped get the company going.
You mean the $451.8M Department of Energy loan they used to buy the old NUMMI Toyata plant? Yeah.... They paid that off nine years early with interest. Try again.
I'm pretty sure that Tesla managed to get at least 400,000 cars sold in the US before fully phasing out of the tax credit. That's between 1.5 billion and 2.5 billion, depending upon how you estimate it.
EDIT: Also, this amounts to fewer than 50,000 cars in revenue. Sales restrictions in various states have probably cost them more in sales than they gained in tax benefits.
I absolutely do understand that. But there are economic principles at play here too. A $7,500 rebate is effectively a lower price without costing the manufacturer anything.
While it is true that the buy has to meet the $7,500 threshold for that to work (which is not insignificant) for much of the lifespan of rebate availability, the cars were averaging >60k. Hopefully most people buying cars in that price range have incomes that make $7,500 in tax rebates possible.
By the time that the prices had dropped to 50k, the rebates where closer to $3,700. How many were sold at each range and what percentage of the rebate was accessible? Hard to say... thus the range of possible subsidies.
Either way, though, this was effectively a big help to the business.
Again, that article is inferring that Solar and BEV (Alternative fuel and Energy Source) sales equates to Elon getting government money.
Everything that generates a receipt or purchase order when dealing with the U.S. government is a publicly available record and can be requested via the FOIA act (Just like the DEO grant).
Did you notice how none of that where presented in the article you linked?
Did he? What kind of government money did Tesla get? I am not aware of any specific money paid to Tesla, only general benefits for electric cars, which were paid to the buyers, not Tesla. Not like GM, which got billions in a government-bailout, which they used to build their charging network /s.
https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-repays-department-energy-lo...
Meanwhile, why don't we talk about the GM bailout money?
If you can cite a source for the "billions" you mentioned, that would be great to read, since I must've missed that one.