[parineum]

Going into a sector with lots of incentives is good business. It's not like he lobbied congress for those subsidies and they were tailored so that basically only he could qualify. Everyone had access to all of those subsidies, Musk was a nobody before Tesla and SpaceX.

Why didn't Ford and Boeing, companies with a much better footing than Musk, simply move into those sectors (EVs and re-usable rockets, respectively) and mop up all those subsidies for themselves?

[aaomidi]

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/tesla-inc/lobbying?id=D0000...

Tesla did lobby, quite a bit. They've also been angry about the subsidies that require cars to be union made.

[parineum]

The Roadster was released in 2008. Barely any money was spent on lobbying until after the Model S was already released (2012), the Powerwall announced (2015) and the Model X was released (2015). That's also post-IPO (2010).

Tesla was already a successful, innovative electric car company before it started lobbying like a regular car company.

All of the risk that paid off (what makes a businessman a good businessman) was done in the early days when he invested 6.5 million that he turned into billions.

[danaris]

Yeah, and Musk only became the CEO in 2008.

He didn't create the company, and he didn't create the Roadster.

[parineum]

He invested 6.5m of the 7.5m that was raised in funding. Without that investment, Tesla probably dies on the vine. He didn't "create" the Roadster but he did believe in the electric car and backed it up with a significant investment that allowed the people who were hired to create it to stay employed.

He deserves credit for believing in the David and turning it into Goliath (of EVs), even if government subsidies helped.

I support the government subsidizing clean energy, electric cars and cheaper access to space and I think it's hypocritical to turn around and shit on the companies that take advantage of those subsidies and do exactly the thing that they are meant to encourage.

[cma]

Large established companies would be legally cautious on things like fake battery swap stations (couldn't operate with real road wear, just taken from the battery install tooling in the factiry) to claim hundreds of millions in subsidies, or using NASA money to buy junk bonds in another company he had interest in (SolarCity), then giving a presentation with faked shingles to bail out the company through a merger and prevent the bonds backed by NASA money from failing and the repercussions from that. Then use SpaceX to create Boring Company without giving them a stake while Musk got 90% (later reversed in a quiet settlement giving SpaceX around 6%).

[parineum]

You really shoehorned that one in there. An established company wouldn't have to do all that, they could have just made and electric car and/or re-usable rockets.