This is a man whose business was dying until Obama saved him and now he is in charge of cutting gvernment waste?
‘Tesla Wouldn’t Be Tesla’ if Not for 2010 Economic Stimulus Loan
The world’s leading electric carmaker got a major boost from a U.S. Energy Department loan back in 2010. Now the folks who approved that loan have some advice for Congress.
About a month after Barack Obama won the presidency, a cash-strapped Elon Musk made it clear that Tesla Inc.—then a boutique maker of a $109,000 sports car—would have to delay the rollout of a less expensive electric sedan unless it got government support. It was the middle of what was then the worst American financial collapse since the Great Depression, and the markets had just taken too much of a beating. “We can’t move forward with that without a major amount of capital,” the chief executive officer said in an interview in December 2008.
Musk’s plea was well-timed: The incoming president was keen to use part of the approximately $800 billion stimulus package his team was preparing to create a new green energy economy. One year after Obama took office, Tesla got a $465 million federal loan to design electric vehicles and build them at a manufacturing plant in Fremont, Calif. The company went public shortly thereafter, repaid the loan early, mainstreamed the electric vehicle, and now employs about 20,000 people in the Bay Area alone. It has the second-largest market capitalization of any automaker worldwide.
Looking back, the officials who ran the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office—a technology commercialization shop connected to both Tesla and a less successful solar venture, Solyndra—have some advice for the architects of this year’s economic stimulus in the U.S. While economic stimulus isn’t the LPO’s only function, it “really has a chance to shine when the larger credit markets just aren’t there,” said former director Mark McCall.
We heard all the right wing jibberish about Solyndra, but Tesla was part of the same policy.
Yeah, trump won because he spoke to he middle class and Harris ddn't.