Elon Musk's companies received $21 billion from US government since 2008: Report

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc, and founder of SpaceX, has received nearly $21 billion (Rs 1.8 lakh crore) for his companies from the US government since 2008.

As per a recent report by The Independent, since Donald Trump took charge, $76.7 million has been promised to Musk's companies. However, what is interesting is the amount of taxpayer Money the billionaire's firms have received over the years.

Since 2008, SpaceX (founded in 2002) has gotten the most funding through government contracts and awards—$20.7 billion—out of which $8.7 billion has so far been paid. Of this, $14.6 billion came from NASA, and include everything from designing moon landers to "supply runs to the International Space Station".

Contracts from the US Department of Defence (DoD) make up the bulk of the rest of the contracts, accounting for $5.6 billion, and mostly comprise of secretive satellite launches. The DoD has also offered SpaceX a maximum payout of $32.8 billion, the report added.

SpaceX has contracts with other government bodies too, the report stated, adding the company is owned $1.4 million by the Department of Commerce and $578,875 by the Dpartment of Veteran Affairs.

Electric car manufacter Tesla is a distant, distant second, with government contracts and awards accounting for $4.5 million, mosty for solar power generation or for buying vehicles.

Even though the company did not receive major government contracts running into the billions, it has benefited from taxpayers' money in other ways. For insatance in 2010, after it sold less than 2000 cars, Tesla received a $465 million low-interest loan from the the Department of Energy .

Additionally, Tesla has benefited from $3.4 billion in tax credits given to customers in order to sell more cars, something that allows the company to charge higher for vehicles than they normally could.