Sarah Palin, Elon Musk: Why Did Former Alaska Governor Call Tesla Motors A 'Loser'?

In response to an April 5 Facebook post by Sarah Palin calling his company a "loser," Elon Musk, the co-founder of electric car company Tesla Motors, published an apparently sarcastic Twitter reply describing himself as "deeply wounded." Like Fisker Automotive, another electric car company found itself the subject of Palin's barbs. Tesla received a $465 million loan from the Department of Energy. The automaker reportedly plans to pay back the loan five years early, due to the success of its Model S Sedan, which was voted Motor Trend's Car of the Year in 2012.

Tesla has come under fire in the past from Republican politicians. In early October, then-presidential candidate Mitt Romney called the company -- again, in conjunction with Fisker Automotive -- as a "loser" in a presidential debate. After Romney was defeated in the 2012 elections, Musk suggested that Romney had gotten "the object, but not the subject" of the remark right.

Fisker Automotive, the maker of the Karma sports car, laid off 160 employees last Friday in an effort to stay afloat. It is in talks with three Chinese businesses considering buying or investing in it. One laid-off employee told the LA Times that workers were given their accrued vacation pay and dismissed without severance pay, even after the automaker made them take a one-week furlough last month to save cash.

On Facebook, Palin, the former governor of Alaska, denounced what she called the Obama administration's "crony capitalism" and singled out the "Obama-subsidized Tesla that turns into a 'brick' when the battery completely discharges and then costs $40,000 to repair."

In Musk's Twitter response to the comment, he wrote, "Btw, Model S warranty does cover 'bricking'".

In February 2012, Tesla published a response to a car blog recounting the problem of "bricked" Tesla Roadster batteries. The blog wrote that five owners of the Roadster electric sports car let their batteries run down until they were completely discharged and thus rendered inoperable. In Tesla's response, it wrote that the Model S had more protections than the Roadster and that drivers would have to be particularly negligent to cause a costly battery replacement, adding that it could be recharged if driven to a zero battery state. The Roadster has since been discontinued. Last week, Tesla said that it was scrapping the cheaper, low-end 40-kwh Model S because of low sales; it also announced that sales of the Model S had "exceed the target provided in the mid February shareholder letter" by 250 units.