New York state is spending $750 million to build a solar panel factory in Buffalo for SolarCity. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company will lease the plant for $1 a year. It will not pay property taxes for a decade, which would otherwise total an estimated $260 million. The federal government also provides grants or tax credits to cover 30% of the cost of solar installations. SolarCity reported receiving $497.5 million in direct grants from the Treasury Department.
That figure, however, doesn't capture the full value of the government's support.
Since 2006, SolarCity has installed systems for 217,595 customers, according to a corporate filing. If each paid the current average price for a residential system — about $23,000, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists — the cost to the government would total about $1.5 billion, which would include the Treasury grants paid to SolarCity.
Nevada has agreed to provide Tesla with $1.3 billion in incentives to help build a massive battery factory near Reno.
The Palo Alto company has also collected more than $517 million from competing automakers by selling environmental credits. In a regulatory system pioneered by California and adopted by nine other states, automakers must buy the credits if they fail to sell enough zero-emissions cars to meet mandates. The tally also includes some federal environmental credits.
Thanks for your constructive reply btw.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gigafactory_1#State_competitio...
By even bringing up SpaceX you're trying to narrow the goalposts to something no one else is talking about.
You can complain about corporate welfare but only complaining about one corporation isn't really fair. Walmart utilizes local police forces to skimp on internal security (not too mention using welfare to subsidize poor pay), Military companies relying on politicians literally stuffing their coffers while the Pentagon argues otherwise, resource extraction companies are given free permits to bleed the land dry, agricultural subsidies, 0% interest loans dictated through the Fed, the auto bailouts, the financial bailouts, propping up home prices through artificial means. The pattern seems to be taking tax dollars and giving them to corporations.
As long as it's local not federal money I don't see the need to complain, because it's not my money.
However, locations are forced to play the game from network effects which push companies out of small communities. So, banning this behavior is likely to make things even worse for small town America. Still, getting rid of this might be better, but it's not as clear cut as you might think.
Not saying subsidies of either type are good or bad... just saying that it's not reasonable to accuse Musk's companies of excessive reliance on public funding, while neglecting the beams in his competitors' eyes.