You don’t think that its in the national interest for the USA to develop electric cars?
Not if it requires 20% tax credit + insane CAFE and other standards to even get a 1-2% market share.
You wish Musk ill.
Before what he did on the tweet, I certainly didn't wish him ill, but he deserves what is coming to him for that. But regardless of that, he is hardly deserving of any accolades. Living off government investment, even when it makes sense for the government to get involved, is hardly enough to make him a "national treasure" as you put it.
So you understand government support for transportation projects go back to the earliest days of the republic.
The idea for the erie canal had been around since the revolution of 1776. Because it was just impossible and unprofitable to get grain from the rich farms of western new york the cities along the coast. The roads were bad. The last wars east of the Appalachian mountains against the Iroquois indians had been fought in this region. In 1809 Jefferson called the idea sheer madness. Not an unreasonable response. They didn’t have steam shovels in those days. Everything had to be done by shovel, pick ax and wheel barrow. The proposed canal was to be over 400 miles long.
8 Years later in 1817 New York state funded the project. There were no engineers. The job was done by amateurs and completed in 1825.
Subsequently two more eastern canals were built. the B&O canal and the Pennsylvania canal. They were all built with state funds.
The canals were obsoleted 20 years later in the 1840’s by the railroads. Once again state and federal governments intervened to give benefits to the railroads so as to encourage their growth. the most famous of these benefits went to the railroads that built their lines from the Mississippi river to the pacific ocean. In this case the federal government gave the railroads the land to build the railroad plus land on either side of the railroad. These were called railroad land grants.
https://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/timeline/riseind/railroad/grants.html
Federal largess to electric car is peanuts compared to federal largess in the past. Like you I don’t buy the whole CO2 business.
But I do buy that in the future with economies of scale and cheaper more efficient batteries—the electric cars will get cheaper than internal combustion cars. But not without a fight of course. But the fight between designs will be a beautiful thing for the car buying public. In the 2020’s imho we are going to come into another golden age of cars.