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Tesla is the company of the moment — the prime exemplar of just about any big and important trend that you might care about.

Why it matters: Almost every reader of finance and business news will have at least one strongly-held opinion about Tesla. What you might not realize is just how widely those opinions range, and the degree to which they map onto much broader views of the world.

Climate

Tesla, especially after its merger with Solar City, sometimes feels like a Utopian project — an attempt to populate a carbon-neutral future with fast, efficient vehicles that don't contribute to global warming.

  • Tesla stands to be a primary beneficiary of Joe Biden's economic policy, should it be enacted. Biden has promised to spend $2 trillion over four years on a plan that includes: creating 1 million new jobs in the American auto industry; generating clean, American-made electricity; and investing in battery technology.
  • Separately, Biden has pledged to buy "tens of billions of dollars of clean vehicles and products."

U.S. economic policy

Tesla has already benefited from the Fed's zero-interest rate policy following the global financial crisis — a policy designed to incentivize capital-intensive investment.

  • Tesla has raised more than $20 billion in debt and equity since inception, almost entirely in years when it was losing money. Easy-money policies made such fundraising possible.
  • $465 million of that debt came in the form of a direct loan from the federal government.
  • Tax breaks for electric vehicles helped drive many of the company's early sales. Tesla also received tax breaks when building its old and new factories.

The product

Capitalists love and fear natural monopolies. Tesla's flagship product — its cars, powered by its batteries, its home-built software, and its network of charging stations — is years ahead of the competition, and is synonymous with "electric vehicle" for many.

  • Tesla has inspired a host of copycats. But so far none of the EV entrepreneurs, nor even the powerful global automakers, has penetrated Tesla's competitive moat.
  • That could change as EV adoption approaches a tipping point in the next few years, says Axios' Joann Muller, but for now, Tesla is the undisputed king of EVs.

The one thing Tesla hasn't made, despite many years' worth of promises that it was just around the corner, is a self-driving car. That hasn't stopped the company from advertising a feature called "autopilot."

The billionaire economy

Depending on whom you talk to, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is the archetypal cartoon-villain billionaire — or else he's the archetypal planet-saving billionaire.

  • Musk is crude, obnoxious, and worth $70 billion; journalists cross him at their peril. He delights in his status as provocateur, and has never encountered a rule he didn't want to break. All of this makes him very popular among would-be disrupters.

Transcripts show George Floyd told police "I can't breathe" over 20 times

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Newly released transcripts of bodycam footage from the Minneapolis Police Department show that George Floyd told officers he could not breathe more than 20 times in the moments leading up to his death.

Why it matters: Floyd's killing sparked a national wave of Black Lives Matter protests and an ongoing reckoning over systemic racism in the United States. The transcripts "offer one the most thorough and dramatic accounts" before Floyd's death, The New York Times writes.

The state of play: The transcripts were released as former officer Thomas Lane seeks to have the charges that he aided in Floyd's death thrown out in court, per the Times. He is one of four officers who have been charged.

  • The filings also include a 60-page transcript of an interview with Lane. He said he "felt maybe that something was going on" when asked if he believed that Floyd was having a medical emergency at the time.

What the transcripts say:

  • Floyd told the officers he was claustrophobic as they tried to get him into the squad car.
  • The transcripts also show Floyd saying, "Momma, I love you. Tell my kids I love them. I'm dead."
  • Former officer Derek Chauvin, who had his knee on Floyd's neck for over eight minutes, told Floyd, "Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk."

Read the transcripts via DocumentCloud.