(Bloomberg) – Elon Musk, whose Tesla Inc. was one of the main beneficiaries of government stimulus in the wake of the latest global financial crisis, has been bent on the concept.
Tesla’s open chief executive and US government contractor SpaceX tweeted on Friday that “another government stimulus package is not in the best interest of the people,” he said.
A decade before Tesla became the world’s most valuable automaker by market capitalization, the company survived the Great Recession entirely, in Musk’s words, thanks in part to a $ 465 million federal loan to design electric vehicles and build them. in Fremont, California The company went public, paid off the loan early, and now employs about 20,000 people in the Bay Area alone.
Read more: Tesla’s success shows the value of green stimulus spending
Before Tesla got the federal loan, Musk was clear: Without government support, the company, then a boutique manufacturer of a $ 109,000 sports car, would have to delay launching a less expensive electric sedan.
“We cannot move forward with that without a large amount of capital,” said the CEO in an interview in December 2008. “If we do not receive any government funding, what we have to do is wait for the capital markets to recover, what could be in a year or two. “
Congress is now working on another stimulus package to help revive a US economy devastated by the coronavirus pandemic.
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