In the article “Elon Musk’s business empire is built on $38 billion in government funding,” The Washington Post examines the extensive government funding that has fueled the growth of Musk’s various business ventures. Regarding Tesla’s reliance on subsidies, assistant professor of engineering management and systems engineering John Paul Helveston highlighted the contradiction between Musk’s push to eliminate subsidies across all industries and his own company’s history of benefiting from them.
Here is an excerpt from the article: “By pushing to cut subsidies across all industries, Helveston said, Musk is strangling a potential lifeline for smaller companies – and his competitors. “Pretty much every aspect [of Tesla] has benefited from direct government subsidy or financing,” he said. “It’s not a weird phenomenon for Tesla to benefit from this, but it is certainly hypocritical.”
Read the full article on The Washington Post.