– Tesla was launched prior to regulatory credits. The ICE makers, not Tesla, lobbied for the credits system. There's no evidence that these credits did anything

– Tesla was launched prior to regulatory credits. The ICE makers, not Tesla, lobbied for the credits system. There's no evidence that these credits did anything other than give Tesla more capital to build factories faster, accelerating their trajectory from debt to profit. Tesla's current financial success is unprecedented low COGS and enviable automotive gross margins, directly as a result of good engineering (superbottle, octovalve, whole body castings, etc). – Even if SpaceX existed to "capture free government money" the result which matters is US taxpayers saving tens of billions of dollars because of how much cheaper SpaceX was compared to all alternatives. SpaceX has also cut off billions of dollars of US taxpayer money getting exfiltrated to Russia, whether directly (e.g. access to ISS) or indirectly (e.g. ULA buying RD-180 engines). – Or maybe facts exist – What's there to get? Like anyone else, Elon has opinions and some amount of money. They're not necessarily your opinions or your amount of money. But the principle remains the same.