3 ms·

Elon Musk Took $17M in Federal Charging Grants Before Firing Supercharger Team

36 points by MBCook 3y ago

h2odragon 3y ago
I wonder how hard it would be to find the data on how much grant money went into each extant, functional charging station in the USA. quick survey of headlines suggests that number will be quite large.
- ActionHank 3y ago
  This should be a requirement for these sorts of grants, they should also be made publicly available.
eschulz 3y ago
Wouldn't Tesla leadership have an obligation to their shareholders to take any funds or grants that can financially help the business? Can not people who work at Tesla, including the CEO himself, practice their right to speech by publicly stating what policies they are for or against? This isn't really much of a story.
- htk 3y ago
  It's Jalopnik, they'll use whatever they can to bash Tesla.
  - bantunes 3y ago
    Do you have anything concrete to back this claim?
    - htk 3y ago
      Pretty much everyone who follows the space knows it, even Jalopnik themselves: https://jalopnik.com/in-case-you-needed-a-reminder-tesla-fans-are-creepily-c-1846096490 https://jalopnik.com/in-case-you-needed-a-reminder-tesla-fan... The article starts with "I know that we often get accused of having a strong anti-Tesla bias on our site". You can read a balanced article about this here: https://www.greencarfuture.com/electric/why-jalopnik-hates-tesla https://www.greencarfuture.com/electric/why-jalopnik-hates-t...
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - MBCook 3y ago
    Is the claim factually wrong?
- dragontamer 3y ago
  > Wouldn't Tesla leadership have an obligation to their shareholders to take any funds or grants that can financially help the business? Wouldn't voters have an obligation to ourselves to prevent our tax dollars from being wasted from amoral conmen who have no intent to actually deliver on the promises associated to those tax dollars? Our loyalties to USA should be above and beyond our loyalties to one company in our 401k.
- 56j675mn6 3y ago
  No because that isn't the only factor that goes into deciding to take a grant or not. Some grants may be financially beneficial, but impact operations in a way that causes negative impact to the way the business is conducted.
- Zigurd 3y ago
  Preach! It's not like that rocket company that hired the NASA administrator who made their not ready rocket the sole Artemis moon lander.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jerlam 3y ago
Tesla also made a big PR event that they opened up Superchargers in California to non-Teslas, one day before the layoffs, but this article suggests that it's "some Superchargers" and "some cars". https://cleantechnica.com/2024/04/30/no-tesla-stations-arent-open-to-all-evs-yet/ https://cleantechnica.com/2024/04/30/no-tesla-stations-arent... Whether the program will expand is now quite murky.

36 points by MBCook 3y ago

I wonder how hard it would be to find the data on how much grant money went into each extant, functional charging station in the USA. quick survey of headlines suggests that number will be quite large.

ActionHank 3y ago
This should be a requirement for these sorts of grants, they should also be made publicly available.

eschulz 3y ago

Wouldn't Tesla leadership have an obligation to their shareholders to take any funds or grants that can financially help the business? Can not people who work at Tesla, including the CEO himself, practice their right to speech by publicly stating what policies they are for or against? This isn't really much of a story.

htk 3y ago
It's Jalopnik, they'll use whatever they can to bash Tesla.
- bantunes 3y ago
  Do you have anything concrete to back this claim?
  - htk 3y ago
    Pretty much everyone who follows the space knows it, even Jalopnik themselves: https://jalopnik.com/in-case-you-needed-a-reminder-tesla-fans-are-creepily-c-1846096490 https://jalopnik.com/in-case-you-needed-a-reminder-tesla-fan... The article starts with "I know that we often get accused of having a strong anti-Tesla bias on our site". You can read a balanced article about this here: https://www.greencarfuture.com/electric/why-jalopnik-hates-tesla https://www.greencarfuture.com/electric/why-jalopnik-hates-t...
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- MBCook 3y ago
  Is the claim factually wrong?
dragontamer 3y ago
> Wouldn't Tesla leadership have an obligation to their shareholders to take any funds or grants that can financially help the business? Wouldn't voters have an obligation to ourselves to prevent our tax dollars from being wasted from amoral conmen who have no intent to actually deliver on the promises associated to those tax dollars? Our loyalties to USA should be above and beyond our loyalties to one company in our 401k.
56j675mn6 3y ago
No because that isn't the only factor that goes into deciding to take a grant or not. Some grants may be financially beneficial, but impact operations in a way that causes negative impact to the way the business is conducted.
Zigurd 3y ago
Preach! It's not like that rocket company that hired the NASA administrator who made their not ready rocket the sole Artemis moon lander.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

jerlam 3y ago

Tesla also made a big PR event that they opened up Superchargers in California to non-Teslas, one day before the layoffs, but this article suggests that it's "some Superchargers" and "some cars". https://cleantechnica.com/2024/04/30/no-tesla-stations-arent-open-to-all-evs-yet/ https://cleantechnica.com/2024/04/30/no-tesla-stations-arent... Whether the program will expand is now quite murky.