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Originally Posted by Frank Lee

I don't bat an eye at electric subsidy because oil and others have had so much subsidy for so long, the playing field is not even close to being level.

You are right about the playing field not even being close to level, but wrong about which field has historically been favored.

Electrification in the US began in the 1880s, a good 2 decades before the Ford Model T. The first automobiles were electric. The US had many electrification projects and subsidies to grow power production and distribution.

How many people have a gasoline pump at their house? Nearly everyone has an electric outlet.

Electric vehicles have had every opportunity to be the dominant transportation choice in the US, but they simply could not compete with the energy density of petroleum. They still cannot compete with the energy density of petroleum.

Who wants to pay twice as much for a vehicle that travels 1/5 as far and cannot be fueled up in 5min? I do, but I'm a minority, and a multiple vehicle owner.

Originally Posted by wdb

I for one have no problems with a couple of my tax dollars going into its creation; in fact I feel a good bit of pride in it, and in the fact that Tesla is a US company. We need more like it.

Wonderful! You can subsidize any company you want with your own money and convince whomever you like to do the same with their own money. That is called venture capitalism. People and groups do this voluntarily all the time, and they often make a lot of money.

If a person forced me to be a venture capitalist with no direct ownership in a company that would be criminal. For a government to force me to be a venture capitalist with no personal benefit from success is tyrannical.

The government should have no business in venture capitalism because politicians don't have the motivation or expertise to make efficient decisions about how best to allocate R&D funds.

The logic just does not follow. If government is the best way to develop a technology, then they should be called upon to develop the next iPad, or make my TV screen thinner and larger.

Incentives to develop alternative fuels and vehicles already exists because consumers demand better, faster, cheaper, longer, greener.

In my opinion the federal government should subsidize industries that aren't quite there yet, or that hold great promise but do not attract sufficient private investment to get them moving.

The government should subsidize very few things. Nearly everything the government touches becomes a colossal mess. Why do college tuition rates far exceed inflation? It's because the government subsidizes "education" and now everyone can and must go to college to obtain even menial jobs requiring no particular specialization.

Why are food prices skyrocketing? The government subsidizes farming, and in particular corn crops. If we weren't forced to burn 10% ethanol in our vehicles the crops could be used to feed people.

A case for subsidy might hold up for really big projects, such as the development of fusion power. There may be a place for government in the sciences, but certainly not in industry and the marketplace. It really cannot help in those areas, and it's unfair.