Well, yeah. Who else? It's not dissimilar to how academic research funding works. Proposals are submitted, evaluated, and sometimes awarded funds.

As far as curbing carbon emissions goes, there are a lot of irons in that fire, both public and private. No reason to place all your eggs in one basket. There are a lot of reasons to publicly support new innovations in EVs. It's a very high-profile field, and Tesla is doing a fantastic job of showing that EVs can be fun, pleasant cars. Putting the money into academic research isn't going to generate nearly as much public interest.