Considering the pickup EV has been an enormous commercial flop, only selling barely a fraction of Musk’s promised 250,000 to 500,000 Cybertrucks a year, there’s a good chance Tesla is using the mercurial CEO’s other venture to boost the numbers ahead of the end of an otherwise disastrous year.
Because it is :)
EV subsidies are going away soon, so Elons putting some money fromone pocket to the other now, but also claims the subsidies so he’s putting more money to that other pocket than he took out from the first pocket.
Space x money is coming from government contracts too, that’s an insane feedback loop of potential fraud.
SpaceX bids on services that the government puts up for offer and wins with usually the lowest bid.
What they do with that money as long as they provide the service is up to them. If they need some vehicles to haul gear, or want to provide vehicles to each employee that’s up to them.
There’s no fraud from them buying them.
Edit: also Starlink is their biggest revenue source nowadays and is profitable, they aren’t solely funded off government contracts and investors anymore.
They finally have decent revenue, a large percentage of that is consumer, but nearly half is still government contracts. It’s notoriously hard to tell what amount the company is profitable because of how they move around the amount of money they burn on R&D.
So some where around 50% of starlink, almost all of the rest of the business are relying on grants and bids.
The cybertruck is both not selling to consumers and is extremely unreliable from a maintenance standpoint. So now Elon is moving money from one business, which is still majority funded by government money, to buy shitty cars no one wants from himself. That’s not even adding in that he’s been actually buying then himself image of Tesla as fleet vehicles. Like legit BUYING his own cars as fleet vehicles cause no one else will.
It’s bad.
I mean sure, it doesn’t look great, but it’s not fraud.
SpaceX is a private company buying vehicles that regardless of how you feel about them, are capable of towing things or being gifts to employees for the work they’ve done.
SpaceX needs vehicles to tow things, and using an EV to help lower emissions would be a valid goal. They’re also an all day portable 240v power source which I’m sure there are plenty of uses for in construction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-2rjmL8MgY
I’m not even sure if it would reach the level of fraud given they’re a private company if they just let them sit on a lot for years then sold them at a loss as a used vehicle, but I imagine that would warrant their private investors suing for some breach of duty though
Edit: Also you really need to separate sold services from government giving them money. Grants can be a different thing, but when the government pays them $100 million to launch a rocket, they get a $100 million and launch a rocket. It’s not some sort of life line or subsidy. This is in general as well for sold services/contracts, not targeted at SpaceX. SpaceX survived early on because of these, but they were still selling a service the government wanted. Also, the government is saving 10’s of billions of dollars using SpaceX vs alternatives.
It looks bad cause it is, what Musk is doing with his companies has all the look of moving money around to hide losses, it’s generally seen as a bad thing to amortize losses from one of your businesses to another (cybertruck), if shareholders cared there would be more lawsuits.
You also see this with how the businesses are being consolidated around xai. It’s a house of cards thats being held up by a government largess.
I made an edit, you might have missed about the government side, but i’ll just post it again here.
Nothing is being “held up by government largess” with SpaceX.
I actually refuse to separate out any of that, that money which is coming from an entity which is getting provided that money by taxpayers is the primary funding. Those contracts for service or grants for research are all ultimately controlled by an entity who can either collapse to the point where that money is no longer available, or absorb the business in an authoritarian way, or simply put money behind a different billionaires infrastructure. By making it really hard for the last guy and really easy for the next guy, they really don’t lose that much time.
The real value of musk, the tesla stock price, was based on having a near monopoly on cars and charging, that’s been mixed to AI and humanoid robots. One of which doesn’t turn a profit and the other of which doesnt exist.
Space X, the only company that produces anything of value in Musks portfolio only exists because of tax payer money.
Dude is on thin ice, it’s getting thinner, and the American government will be under it when it falls to screw him just as hard as it helped him.
Well, as long as that’s your stance you’re always going to be misinformed or angry about things.
This is a garbage in garbage out situation.
You’ve painted yourself into this garbage corner where you can’t/won’t accept something, and that cascades to your entire view on the topic.