nberry:

Nick ,the incentive is Tesla, accelerated the EV credibility causing other car manufactures to jump in sooner than they were ready to do so. Losing Tesla now would send the wrong message. That said, our government is control by conservatives and I'm not sure they will want to save it.

While your text is addressed to Nick, one will take liberty to add some thought to this posting and your previous posting.  While there is a conservative in the White House, and both houses of Congress are technically controlled by a Republican majority, one can hardly declare that the entire U.S. federal government is controlled by conservatives.  One does realize that you consider conservatism a disease or mental disorder but no one political ideology defines the federal government with its multiple legions of career bureaucrats.  

The 2009 bailouts of Chrysler and General Motors under the Obama Administration actually started in 2008 under the Bush Administration.  This was an unique set of parameters and it is quite doubtful that any other administration would essential nationalize two major players in an oligopoly unless there were significant stakeholders, i.e., unions representing the workforces of both Chrysler and General Motors.  Tesla, as a non-union company does has fewer significant stakeholder blocks.  Government is not a venture capitalist and it has, even with DARPA and related entities, in the Department of Defense a horrible track record of picking economic winners and losers.  Even in the realm of private sector venture capital, economic success is fleeting.  Often investments are made too early ahead of a pending market or technological advance or investments are made where there are no sustainable markets.  That's life in venture and private equity.  

As one has stated before, Tesla's potential downfall is its charismatic leader, Elon Musk, and his inability to proactively manage the process.  While many may see him as a visionary, he took the company into a direction that is not conducive to financial stability.  In essence, he over promised and under delivered.  Tesla is not an innovator in the EV space and its sole innovation was design of the product coupled with a very large battery that gave low acceleration times coupled with relatively long range.  Musk promised a dreamy world of manufacturing with machines-that fabled Alien Dreadnought-fabricated millions upon millions of nearly identical cars.  In reality mass producing is an experience and capital based endeavor, something that Tesla lacks.  

If Tesla stayed a niche builder of premium EVs, its financial prospects would be much stronger.   However, Musk's compensation plan was tied toward meeting high volume production figures which included the mass market Model 3 and Model Y.   Musk, as an effective manager, needed to work with his board and his major investors to derive a suitable compensation plan, that while still maintaining stretch goals, realistically projected financial targets.  Musk also needed to temper the market's expectations for the company.  Tesla's current market capitalization is similar to that of Ford Motor Corporation, a company that produces 35,000 units daily and leads the industry in the volume of premium vehicles (F-150 pickup trucks and SUVs) priced above $50,000.  That valuation signifies a tremendous production ramp combined with very high gross margins.  When Tesla's gross margins are adjusted to the industry standard, profitability essentially vanishes.  

Tesla' greatest challenges today is not the capital markets.  For some reason, there are still plenty of small investors still enamored with Musk vision of Tesla to support additional debt financings, even a high yield interest rates.  Instead, Tesla faces demand for cash upon delivery from its suppliers.  Current accounts payable at Tesla are in excess of $2.4 billion.  Note that this is much greater than $1.0 billion of debt coming due this year.  Tesla's financial position isn't too dissimilar to that of Toys R Us.  Toys R US, while with a heavy debt load, wasn't able to generate enough cash to pay its suppliers, which then refused to provide trade credit.  Once trade credit was denied Toy R Us, it faced liquidation.