Specifically in response to that Times article:
http://electrek.co/2015/05/30/opinion-times-article-on-musks...
Elon argues that the subsidies only make sense because they offset the much greater subsidies that the fossil fuel industry gets implicitly from negative externalities (to the tune of over 5 trillion): http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/survey/so/2015/new070215...
Some people still like to argue that Tesla is propped up by government help, but by this slide they put up in their shareholders meeting, that's clearly not the case: