Newsom Razzes Elon Musk Over Tesla Taking $3.2 Billion in California Subsidies

Gavin Newsom is happy to rub Elon Musk’s face in how many billions of dollars Tesla has taken in state subsidies, declaring there is “no Tesla without California.”

You do not need a master’s degree in political science to understand why California Gavin Newsom goes out of his way to pick fights with Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Newsom wants to raise his national profile for the 2028 presidential election, or even 2024 if Biden should decline to run again. And he sees lib-trolling conservative trolls as an effective method to doing that.

Newsom has recently taken Tesla CEO Elon Musk as a new favorite target. The Chronicle reports Newsom said on a September 12 governors’ panel that “There was no Tesla without California's regulatory bodies, and regulation,” and that Tesla has “been a beneficiary of well over a billion dollars of subsidies.” Newsom added on a New York climate panel last week that Tesla was “inspired by the regulatory framework in California that created that industry.”

So how many billions of dollars has Tesla received in California subsidies? The Chronicle asked.

“Tesla has received more than $3.2 billion worth of direct and indirect California subsidies and market mechanisms since 2009, according to an estimate from Newsom’s office,” according to the Chron’s piece.

Newsom’s office is gloating, of course. But industry analysts feel Newsom may be understating the degree of Tesla’s reliance on California subsidies, particularly credits under the state’s zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) mandate, credits that Tesla was able to sell to other conventional automakers.

UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies founder Dan Sterling told the Chronicle that “Tesla would have gone bankrupt and disappeared without California’s ZEV mandate.”

Related: A Whole Bunch of Electric Vehicle Chargers Could be Coming to SF Gas Stations and Auto Shops [SFist]

Images: (Left) Gage Skidmore, (Right) Debbie Rowe, vie Wikimedia Commons