Ralph Nader, you are lying – shame on you! I personally provided almost all Tesla funding, based on my proceeds from PayPal, from Series A in 2004 until Series C in 2007.
In late 2008, I gave Tesla the last money I had. It was that or the company would have died. We closed that funding round at 6pm on Christmas Eve.
If we had not closed that round, Tesla would have gone bankrupt 2 days after Christmas. I gave my last money thinking Tesla would probably still die, not thinking that it would be lucrative.
The first meaningful government funding Tesla received was in Q2 2010 from a loan under the vehicle efficiency lending program. Tesla paid back that loan early with interest. Taxpayers actually made a profit.
@CommunityNotes
With everybody grandstanding about loans felt it was good time to remind people Barstool qualified for PPP. We decided against asking for money cause we didn’t need it. Instead we raised 40 million for small businesses who did. Yet we’re viewed as bad guys by both lunatic fringes
.@GeorgeTakei held nothing back when he was asked to rate photos of the #SternShow staff’s dads. Check out the full special here: https://t.co/3GBLWEhEIR