Tesla Will Cut Prices To Combat Tax Credit Phase Out (cnn.com) 196
Tesla is cutting its car prices in the United States by $2,000 to combat a cut in a federal tax credit for its buyers. "Tesla triggered the tax credit phase-out in July when it became the first car maker in the United States to sell more than 200,000 plug-in vehicles," reports CNN. "The government designed the credit to be phased out for each automaker once it reaches that milestone." From the report: Before that benchmark, Tesla buyers were entitled to a tax credit of $7,500 for purchasing a plug-in electric car. But as of January 1, Tesla buyers will only get half that credit, or $3,750, for the next six months. The credit falls to $1,875 in July, and then disappears in 2020. The tax credit phase-out comes just as Tesla was preparing to sell a $35,000 version of its Model 3 sedan, the first time it will be taking aim at the price-conscious mass market. CEO Elon Musk said in an interview on "60 Minutes" that he expects the lower-priced version of the Model 3 to be available in five to six months.
Tesla also reported strong production and sales for the just completed fourth quarter. Total sales were up 8% and Model 3 sales were up even more, about 13%, to 63,150 vehicles. That works out to an average of about 4,900 Model 3s per week in the quarter, putting it in range of its goal of 5,000 Model 3's a week.
Tesla also reported strong production and sales for the just completed fourth quarter. Total sales were up 8% and Model 3 sales were up even more, about 13%, to 63,150 vehicles. That works out to an average of about 4,900 Model 3s per week in the quarter, putting it in range of its goal of 5,000 Model 3's a week.
That's Unpossible (Score:5, Interesting)
Tesla also reported strong production and sales for the just completed fourth quarter. Total sales were up 8% and Model 3 sales were up even more, about 13%
Slashdot assured me electric car sales were saturated and that electric cars were just a fad.
I don't think Tesla cares much at all that subsidies are fading out - that is as it should be. The subsidies did the job they were designed for, got Tesla off the ground and to a place where they can sell the car on merits alone without any tax advantages. There certainly are few other cars, period, I'd be interested in looking at these days.
Re:That's Unpossible (Score:5, Insightful)
The subsidies did the job they were designed for, got Tesla off the ground and to a place where they can sell the car on merits alone without any tax advantages.
Maybe. Yes, they got Tesla going, but the goal of the tax credits was to incentivize Americans to shift to EVs. By that measure, the job is far from finished. It never made sense to me that the credit phased out on a per-automaker basis. It seems to me that if it makes sense to use tax credits for this purpose, the credits should continue until a certain percentage of all new car sales are EVs. Tesla, in particular, is on the edge of being able to really increase the EV numbers in the US. A $7500 credit on an $80K model S is nice, but the car is still far too expensive for most people. A $7500 credit on a $35K Model 3, on the other hand, drops the price to $27.5K, which is in range of a relatively large set of the US population.
I'd like to see Congress restructure the credit to continue until, say, 10% of new passenger vehicles are zero-emissions.
Re:That's Unpossible (Score:4, Funny)
what is this "$35K Model 3" you speak off
RTFS (Score:3)
what is this "$35K Model 3" you speak off
The tax credit phase-out comes just as Tesla was preparing to sell a $35,000 version of its Model 3 sedan
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"You are probably retarded enough to think that the hardware for full self driving comes on every Tesla too."
well it's retarded to have listened to what musk said like 3 years+ ago so yes.. anyways. tesla made a purposeful pump of cars in the last quarter to make it look good, at expense of quality and customer care.
and yes the promises of being able to produce model 3 at 35k cost while making profit was a big deal and teslas not hitting that. and come on, waiting 1-2months to get a certified preowned ca
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The $35k will be cancelled or dropped fairly quickly. It's just not competitive in terms of performance and features, and actually quite expensive for what it is.
They want $35k for a 200 mile range car, when Hyundai and Kia have 260 mile range cars for closer to $30k, and Nissan are about to release their new Leaf with similar spec. Those two offer you a lot more in terms of features too - by the time you add options to the Tesla to bring it up to the same level it's added $10k to the price.
I'm sure some pe
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The $35k will be cancelled or dropped fairly quickly. It's just not competitive in terms of performance and features, and actually quite expensive for what it is.
They want $35k for a 200 mile range car, when Hyundai and Kia have 260 mile range cars for closer to $30k, and Nissan are about to release their new Leaf with similar spec. Those two offer you a lot more in terms of features too - by the time you add options to the Tesla to bring it up to the same level it's added $10k to the price.
As has been discussed before, you're making a very slanted comparison, bumping the price of the Tesla to meet features of the others without doing the same in the other direction.
However, none of that has any bearing on my point, which is that if the goal is to use the tax credit to accelerate EV adoption, now is when it will really be effective.
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... bumping the price of the Tesla to meet features of the others without doing the same in the other direction.
How would that work? If the Kia and Leaf are already cheaper, how do you get the Tesla down to the same price (in the other direction)?
Re:That's Unpossible (Score:4, Informative)
They want $35k for a 200 mile range car, when Hyundai and Kia have 260 mile range cars for closer to $30k
Hilarious. Are you talking about the Kona, for $30k - *after* the $7500 tax credit, manufactured at a fraction of the rate of Model 3? Originally planned 30000 vehicles per year! As many manufactured in a month as Tesla does in half a week...competition indeed? How is the $35k model "uncompetitive" against this? The waiting list for this is going to be even worse!
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The Kona is less than the $35k Model 3 before the tax credit here. They are ramping up production fast too, deliveries scheduled for September are arriving this month.
Also note that the Model 3 isn't even available outside the US. If you live in Europe you can't buy one, there is no launch date for the expensive models, and if you order now the earliest delivery you could expect is some time in 2020.
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The Kona is less than the $35k Model 3 before the tax credit here.
Kona is $30k after tax credit and $37.5k before. The $35k Model 3 is supposed to be $35k before tax credit.
Also note that the Model 3 isn't even available outside the US. If you live in Europe you can't buy one, there is no launch date for the expensive models, and if you order now the earliest delivery you could expect is some time in 2020.
Well, in that case, neither can I buy a Kona at one tenth the manufacturing rate.
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As I say, it depends where you live. In Europe the base spec 64kWh Kona is cheaper than the $35k Model 3, based on current Tesla USD:EUR pricing conversions. And you can order a Kona now, with delivery around late January/February from what people are reporting. The system tells everyone "September" by default but people who ordered last month are getting emails saying their car is due in a couple of weeks.
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the base spec 64kWh Kona
How is the long-range model "base spec"?
is cheaper than the $35k Model 3
How is 39k Euro [electrive.com] cheaper than $35k?
And you can order a Kona now, with delivery around late January/February
I hope I'd be luckier than Canadians. [insideevs.com]
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If style mattered, people wouldn't buy Mazda 3s, Priuses, or any Scion.
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If looks really mattered, a lot more people should wear brown bags over their head when they leave their house.
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I don't like the look of the other Tesla models but I happen to think the Model 3 is a great looking car. I think they actually got the styling right there and I like it more than any other sedan I've seen in a long while.
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That's okay, they'll make it up in volume. Which goes to 11.
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Because it doesn't exist. If it did exist then we could compare manufacturing rates but the manufacturing rate of the 35k Model 3 is 0 so it's hardly going to be competitive with anything that has a > 0 manufacturing rate.
Didn't Bolt beat Model 3 to the market by 8 month? And yet, today, Model 3 is being produced at a rate of over 20000 units per month where Bolt remains at 2000 per month or so. So while you may be technically correct, if I mentally time-travel to January 2017, your argument that this somehow predicts future performance falls apart.
Re:That's Unpossible (Score:5, Insightful)
The performance of the Tesla Model 3 is better than that of my wife's BMW 330ci and you're comparing it to the Hyundai and Kia offerings? That is nuts.
Many, many Tesla owners bought because they want an EV and love it because they got a fun family vehicle that outperforms most sports cars. This has been making a slow but sure change in the reason people really buy Teslas, for the thrill of it.
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Well the Kona has been benchmarked at 0-60 in 6.3 seconds, which isn't far off the base Model X at 6.0 seconds. Of course the base X costs more than 2x as much.
But it really depends how you define performance. The range of the Kona and Niro is comparable to the most expensive Tesla models, and greatly exceeds the $35k base model. In terms of features they are much higher spec than the base model, and particularly the Niro is more practical too in terms of having more cargo space and a much, much larger boot
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There are no teslas at the tracks for a reason.....
Yes that would be that the racing organizations have rules that prevent any car not using an internal combustion engine from qualifying, regardless of its capabilities. Its the same reason gas turbine vehicles are not allowed at the track, despite being superior in almost every way in the racing environment, if not on the road.
I'm not a rabid Tesla fan, or an EV fan either. They are a niche vehicle, only good for local transport. In that niche they are adequate, but still overly expensive for what they are.
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They want to encourage a healthy competition for e-Vehicles. The per-automaker basis encourages later entrants to get involved - it makes their cars cheaper and more affordable. So either they can price compete effectively with established players even if their initial costs of production are $7,500 more each, or lure customers away by offering a price competitive discount if it costs less than that.
Or, in summary, you have th
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They want to encourage a healthy competition for e-Vehicles. The per-automaker basis encourages later entrants to get involved - it makes their cars cheaper and more affordable. So either they can price compete effectively with established players even if their initial costs of production are $7,500 more each, or lure customers away by offering a price competitive discount if it costs less than that.
Or, in summary, you have the goal wrong. It's not to incentivize Americans to shift to EVs. It's to incentivize EVs to exist to be shifted to
You really think that Ford and GM need help to compete with a tiny upstart like Tesla? A little price difference isn't what's holding them back, it's broader consumer interest. You want more EVs on the market, get more EVs on the street, regardless of who makes them, and then competition will build.
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Ford and GM don't. When another small upstart (that will probably eventually be purchased by Ford or GM) starts up, it'll need the help.
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Ford and GM don't. When another small upstart (that will probably eventually be purchased by Ford or GM) starts up, it'll need the help.
There won't be any more upstarts. Do you know how rare a thing a successful automaker startup is?
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Do you know how rare a thing a successful automaker startup is?
Well it's precisely 1/N less common than you think it is.
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Do you know how rare a thing a successful automaker startup is?
Well it's precisely 1/N less common than you think it is.
This comment makes no sense to me. Perhaps I'm dense. Wouldn't be the first time.
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You really think that Ford and GM need help to compete with a tiny upstart like Tesla?
Absolutely yes. Ford's sales continue to fall, GM has already had to be bailed out, and wall street has nothing but disdain for both corporations.
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You really think that Ford and GM need help to compete with a tiny upstart like Tesla?
Absolutely yes. Ford's sales continue to fall, GM has already had to be bailed out, and wall street has nothing but disdain for both corporations.
Okay, do you think they deserve help? :-)
More seriously, do you think that tax dollars pumped into encouraging sales of Ford/GM EVs will do more to get EVs on the road than pumping the same dollars into Tesla? I don't. And the healthy, well-run automakers don't need help to compete with Tesla.
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Maybe. Yes, they got Tesla going, but the goal of the tax credits was to incentivize Americans to shift to EVs. By that measure, the job is far from finished
Maybe. Or maybe we're past the tipping point. Maybe enough people already want them that they'll get cheap and ubiquitous enough that they'll run down to their price floor sooner than later.
It never made sense to me that the credit phased out on a per-automaker basis. It seems to me that if it makes sense to use tax credits for this purpose, the credits should continue until a certain percentage of all new car sales are EVs.
Or at least until a certain number of cars are sold, based on the budget available for the program. Whoever sells them first "gets" the credit.
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Maybe. Yes, they got Tesla going, but the goal of the tax credits was to incentivize Americans to shift to EVs. By that measure, the job is far from finished
Maybe. Or maybe we're past the tipping point. Maybe enough people already want them that they'll get cheap and ubiquitous enough that they'll run down to their price floor sooner than later.
Given how weird average people think EVs are, I think we're still some way from that.
It never made sense to me that the credit phased out on a per-automaker basis. It seems to me that if it makes sense to use tax credits for this purpose, the credits should continue until a certain percentage of all new car sales are EVs.
Or at least until a certain number of cars are sold, based on the budget available for the program. Whoever sells them first "gets" the credit.
Sure, that works, too. Actually, my preferred alternative is to drop the EV subsidies and focus instead on removing the subsidies on fossil fuels, and then using taxation to internalize the externalities. For example, a carbon tax. It's quite difficult to accurately assess the full cost of fossil fuels, but I think we should take a stab at it. Honestly, whatever we come up with will probably be too low.
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the goal of the tax credits was to incentivize Americans to shift to EVs. By that measure, the job is far from finished. It never made sense to me that the credit phased out on a per-automaker basis
I prefer the invisible-hand approach (yes, I know), so I never liked consumer-end subsidies. We should have subsidized the manufacturers.
When you buy a car, you buy a $12,000 used Chevy Volt. The other $25,000 is useful for other things.
Well, wait, if you buy a new Tesla, you get $7,500 from the Government. If you don't buy the Tesla, you lose $7,500 when the subsidies go away, so now there's an incentive to buy the new Tesla. Demand goes up, and of course the manufacturers raise the price to take th
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Heh. I prefer the even more invisible hand. Don't subsidize at all, just internalize the externalities of fossil fuels. Tax tailpipe emissions. Adding a few dollars per gallon of pollution taxes, or a couple thousand per year of pollution taxes at vehicle registration time (has challenges, but would enable innovation in pollution capture/reduction technologies), would make EVs much cheaper to operate and have all sorts of other beneficial market-based effects toward reducing air pollution and greenhouse
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Excise tax mostly hurts the poor. You're not making EVs cheaper; you're making non-EVs more-expensive.
Imagine if poor people could afford 30 days's worth of cheap junk-quality food or 12 days's worth of produce and fresh meat. They keep buying garbage processed canned goods, so you tax the shit out of it so they can only afford 9 days's worth of canned goods. What happens?
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Tesla also reported strong production and sales for the just completed fourth quarter. Total sales were up 8% and Model 3 sales were up even more, about 13%
And yet their stock price dropped about 7%, supposedly because total sales were up 8% from the previous quarter instead of 9% (a.k.a. "failed to meet Wall Street expectations). Sometimes I completely fail to understand stock market investors.
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Tesla growth for 2018 is up 93% and is accelerating... is that enough?
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Re: That's Unpossible (Score:2)
You sound convinced. Please don't buy the stock.
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Agreed, the Jun 21 '19 180 puts are a much better buy...and you can buy 30x as much ;)
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(8% growth is bad)
It was 8% from the third quarter to fourth quarter, which would be an annual growth rate of 36%. At that rate of growth, by 2035 Tesla would be selling 25 million cars every year, which is more than the total number of new car sales in the US (Tesla would reach 100% US market share about 2033). I would seriously question any stock broker who thinks that's a bad growth rate.
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I don't know how Tesla fanbois do it. Back when I had Ford stock, I felt absolutely no need to hang onto every bit of news or meticulously watch the ticket.
It was pretty boring when those dividends just kept coming in like clockwork.
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See, that's the problem - Ford was making money, paying dividends, and building millions of vehicles per year.
Wall street doesn't want dividends, they want splits, so that traders can make money on them. Neither GM nor Ford has anything special in the pipeline; all automakers are chanting the same crap about mobility services, but none of them have a game-changing plan for delivering them.
Not even close to enough (Score:2)
Actually the growth is decelerating, as they continue to fail to fulfill their promises. That's not the point, though.
What you have to remember is that the current stock price has Tesla larger and more profitable than Volkswagen, Toyota, or any other car company.
Volkswagen did $270 billion last year, and had a profit of $23 billion. Toyota did a bit more.
Tesla did about $15 billion sales and lost money.
In order to justify the current stock price, Tesla would need to be 20 times larger than they are and inf
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Did I miss something? A far as I can tell, Toyota has only built one electric car in their entire history — the Rav4 EV — and that is discontinued because almost
Huh? Arithmetic (Score:2)
I'll leave your No True Scotsman alone since that could be considered a matter of opinion, I suppose. You love the company. That's cool. Maybe you love the former CEO. Okay, some people like the guy.
I wonder about your arithmetic on stock valuation, though.
> That's why Tesla's stock is so valuable. It isn't an indication that the company is going to rapidly grow to be bigger than Toyota.
You probably know shares of stock essentially represent a share of the company's profit. If you own X% of a company's s
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Toyota has only built one electric car in their entire history â" the Rav4 EV â" and that is discontinued because almost nobody could deal with an EV that had only a 110-mile range.
Nope. Toyota canned it because it wasn't profitable. Rav4 EV owners were universally happy with their vehicles AFAICT, because they were purchased by people for whom the range was not a problem. They could have sold more or less as many of them as they felt like, but they didn't want to sell more.
Re: Not even close to enough (Score:2)
Newspeak. 93% growth is actually a decline in growth?
Yes, less is decline (Score:2)
Read your words carefully "a decline in growth".
Yes, going from 150% growth to 93% would be a declining growth rate.
Which is a problem, because in order to justify a $51 billion valuation on a few million profit, one must expect they'll achieve a 1,000% growth rate.
Re: Yes, less is decline (Score:2)
Actually, official numbers released today show 364% growth in 2018. (But don't let facts get in the way of your narrative)
https://cleantechnica.com/ [cleantechnica.com]
You fail at linking (Score:2)
You fail at internet. I believe you meant to link this puff piece https://cleantechnica.com/2019... [cleantechnica.com]
If you want to be a true believer, that's fine with me.
You think Telsa is going to make 50% more money than any car company ever has, and they are going to do that real soon now, go ahead and believe that.
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I know it's hard for facts to pierce your bubble but that article has some hard facts that you might want to consider.
I operate on facts, not beliefs.
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People with brand new Teslas are having to send them back to the factory to get fixed for incredibly obvious shit. This is a trend that spiked in December.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
https://forums.tesla.com/forum... [tesla.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Sales went up because they absolutely gutted quality control in order to roll out more vehicles before the end of the year. I'd bet my life on it being a deliberate move to placate moronic investors who still swallow the the tripe and believe the hype. Oh
Re:That's Unpossible (Score:4, Interesting)
When they have 35% growth in 2017 and 93% growth in 2018, that doesn't seem like it's slowing.
https://www.fool.com/investing... [fool.com]
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Analysts questioned whether the $2,000 price cut on all models signaled lower demand in the United States, and ultimately whether the move would undermine nascent profitability at the Silicon Valley automaker, which has never posted an annual profit.
"In our view, this move could suggest that what many bulls assume to be a substa
Re: That's Unpossible (Score:2)
Shorts gotta do what shorts do.
There are other incentive programs (Score:3)
Local electric providers around me have sent out a couple offers towards the purchase of a (I assume new) EV. Rebates and other incentives are available.
Of course if you got the full Federal tax credit on top of it all, it ended up quite good, considering the cost the of Nissan Leaf was only 23K.
I'm surprised Tesla didn't raise the price instead. There is a waiting list, so you could consider their products as high in demand, low in supply.
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I was not in the least surprised to see the price drop and see the fact that they didn't drop it $3750 as a sign that they are still supply constrained.
There will be a bit of a drop off in US demand now, but it will be more than compensated for by a shift of more than half of the supply to the overseas markets which should be larger than the American market and will, once again, be soaking up the highest end Model 3s first keeping margins very high for the next half year though there will be a glitch in 1Q
Time for fair play. (Score:5, Insightful)
Since we're no longer subsidizing electric cars, how about we stop subsidizing oil for ICE cars too? How about we stop subsidizing coal too? Putting tons of CO2 into the air is currently 100% environmentally subsidized and that needs to end before it destroys our ecosystem. Instead, people need to start paying so that every gram of CO2 released is also being extracted. It's a market friendly solution to pollution but wouldn't you know it there are people who are against accepting personal responsibility for their own actions.
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EV owners are going to be hit by the fuel tax portion of this in the coming years. Fuel taxes are used to pay for construction and maintenance of roads. EVs, by virtue of not using gasoline, are not paying for the road
Re:Time for fair play. (Score:5, Insightful)
So as the percentage of EVs on the road increases, the amount of money available to build and maintain roads decreases. States are thus experimenting with an extra vehicle registration fee for EVs.
States should really take the opportunity to rationalize the road construction and maintenance cost allocation. According to the US GAO, road damage is proportional to the fourth power of per-axle weight, times the number of axles. They estimate that an 18-wheeler does 9,600 times as much damage as a passenger sedan, and that's on a per-mile basis. When you also factor in that many trucks cover 100K miles per year, vs, say, 15K for a car, that means the trucker's share is 64,000 times that of the car owner.
This approach should be applied uniformly: every vehicle, large and small, should be assessed an annual tax based on miles driven and a * (w/a)^4, where a is the number of axles and w is the vehicle weight. That's not quite accurate because weight isn't distributed evently, but it's close enough. EVs would end up paying more than their ICEV counterparts, because they tend to be heavier.
Oh, of course, with this system, all gasoline and diesel taxes that fund road maintenance should be dropped, and replaced with pollution taxes which attempt to compensate for the environmental damage caused by burning fossil fuels. CO2, particulates, NOx, etc.
Also, forcing people to pay for every gram of CO2 they emit is a tax on breathing.
Nonsense. Unless they're eating fossil fuels, people are carbon neutral. Every gram of CO2 they emit is a gram of CO2 that was absorbed by the plants they ate (or the plants that were eaten by the animals they ate, etc.). The problem isn't CO2 emissions, the problem is the emission of CO2 that was dug out of the ground where it had been safely locked away.
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Nonsense. Unless they're eating fossil fuels, people are carbon neutral. Every gram of CO2 they emit is a gram of CO2 that was absorbed by the plants they ate (or the plants that were eaten by the animals they ate, etc.). The problem isn't CO2 emissions, the problem is the emission of CO2 that was dug out of the ground where it had been safely locked away.
Oh, I should also note that a proper carbon tax would not apply to fuels that are biological in origin. So biodiesel, the ethyl alcohol in ethanol, etc, would not be taxed. If subsidies on ethanol were dropped as these taxes were imposed, this would also allow market forces to rationalize ethanol production. Odds are that it would kill ethanol dead, since the farmers growing the corn to make the alcohol and the distillers running the alcohol production operations would have to pay pollution taxes on all o
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If diesel fuel were charged at a fair tax (about $4,500 per gallon of diesel fuel)
That's three orders of magnitude too high (should be $4.03; see below), and, also, there are lots of diesel-using vehicles that aren't semi trucks so taxing the fuel isn't the right approach. We should tax vehicle miles by weight and axles.
Your comment motivated me to look up some numbers and do some calculations [google.com] (that link is a Google Sheet, which links to my sources). From the DoT's 2016 report (the latest available), 247,644,981 light duty vehicles logged 2,849,718,000,000 miles, while 11,498,561 truck
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If diesel fuel were charged at a fair tax (about $4,500 per gallon of diesel fuel), we would have the best road and rail system in the country.
Long-haul rail depends on diesel, so no we wouldn't. Also, my car runs on diesel, it was built in 1982 and gets 30 MPG on the freeway. I drive far less than average, so the energy cost of production of a vehicle is far more critical for me than for the average person. Around a third of a normal person's vehicle's typical lifetime energy consumption is spent in production, but for me it's probably more like two-thirds or more. By not buying a vehicle every ten years (as is typical) I save enough energy to ma
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This approach should be applied uniformly: every vehicle, large and small, should be assessed an annual tax based on miles driven and a * (w/a)^4, where a is the number of axles and w is the vehicle weight.
Get ready for amazon prime to only be $50 for shipping per item instead of the plebian $100 with that tax policy.
You're exaggerating wildly, but let's assume you're accurate. What does that mean? It means that Amazon Prime is heavily subsidized by the taxpayer. We're forcibly collecting money from hundreds of millions -- and collecting most of it from the non-wealthy -- then burying that money in long strips in the ground.
You're implicitly assuming that trucking is the only possible long-distance delivery mechanism. It's absolutely not. Rail is better and cheaper in virtually every way, including being easier to el
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This approach should be applied uniformly: every vehicle, large and small, should be assessed an annual tax based on miles driven and a * (w/a)^4, where a is the number of axles and w is the vehicle weight.
Get ready for amazon prime to only be $50 for shipping per item instead of the plebian $100 with that tax policy.
Actually, I ran the numbers [google.com], and the cost of truck transport would increase by about 43%. Of course, the total cost of shipping includes a lot more than just the truck transport, and Amazon Prime fees cover more than just shipping, but if we ignore all that then my proposal means that the cost of Prime will go from $119 (the current cost, not $100) to $170.
That crazy world got 4 moderation points from people with greater capacity for ideals than critical thinking.
You should be more careful when you accuse people of not thinking critically.
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the nationwide average of federal and state gasoline taxes is about 50 cents/gallon
Man, fuck my state.
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Neither are large trucks, which cause almost all the damage to road surfaces. That's a much bigger financial hit.
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Since we're no longer subsidizing electric cars, how about we stop subsidizing oil for ICE cars too?
Except, we are still subsidizing electric cars. Tesla reached its first cap when it sold its 200,000th vehicle, just like every manufacturer will at some point. Even so, they are still getting a (smaller) federal subsidy, plus various state and local subsidies.
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For immediate and direct monetary subsidies there is a brief report by the Treasury department in 2015: https://www.treasury.gov/open/... [treasury.gov]
However, the more important and far more expensive is the environmental subsidies. Basically, they've gifted corporations the right to sell products that causes pollution when used without having to clean the pollution up. That gift is by definition a subsidy (check your own link if you want) and therefore it's subsidized pollution. We need to start including the full p
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We need to start including the full price of a product in it's sale price.
Yeah "we need to" do a lot of things, a lot of people say that about a whole lot of different things but actually doing something is a very different ballgame so how about this: you work out how much that is (the full price of the product) for all the things you buy, tally that up and let us know how much it is, then you donate that to an environmental organization. That should get the ball rolling.
Let's see how much your fully unsubsidized life works out to. You say "we need to" do this, so I'm curious to
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you work out how much that is (the full price of the product) for all the things you buy, tally that up and let us know how much it is, then you donate that to an environmental organization.
Sadly, the environmental cost of many products is hidden from the buyers. It would require government regulation to ensure the proper pricing is applied. However, your point that it would cost more and you snidely do not wish to pay for it is exactly the point. This new market force will result in an entirely new line of products that are far more environmentally friendly and therefore less expensive than existing products. The key is not to dump high prices on everyone all at once but rather slowly rai
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Your ecosystem uses CO2 as food...
My ecosystem is carbon neutral. It absorbs and later expels CO2. It's existed for billions of years (in various forms) but has never been in short supply of CO2. However, too much CO2 causes the oceans to become increasingly acidic and the atmosphere to retain too much heat that is disrupting the balanced cycles of life that it enshrines.
Water is absolutely vital for humans to survive but feel free to go drink water until you develop a case of water toxemia. There is such a thing as too much of a good t
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You seem to be another ignorant individual. The continental ecosystems and oceanic ecosystems are connected and their is complex interplay between them but honestly, we need the ocean more than the ocean needs us.
Consider this though, as the Earth gets hotter, there will be a mass migration of humans because the regions of arable land are going to shift while others become completely uninhabitable to all but the most extreme lifeforms. Every anti-immigrant reject should be screaming about the threat of gl
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The ocean is not a living thing - it needs nothing.
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Over the last 300m years the ocean PH has averaged around 8.2
Today it is 8.1
ref: https://www.nationalgeographic... [nationalgeographic.com]
the EPA recommends municipal drinking water be kept between 6.5 and 8.5
Ref: https://www.epa.gov/dwregdev/d... [epa.gov]
If we continue this break-neck pace, the oceans will leave the EPA recommended range for municipal drinking water shortly before the earth is consumed by the sun.
(300m*16=4.8b Red Giant ~10b - current age(4.6b) = 5.4b giving us roughly 600m years between ocean ph dropping below 6.5 be
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The poor will always be victims when change is required and nobody considers them. However, discussing caveats when introducing a general concept is just wasting people's time and derailing the discussion with details that aren't foundational.
Shoulda stayed on that advisory board, Elon (Score:3)
Shoulda stayed on that advisory board, Elon. As a taxpayer though, I think it's great I no longer have to subsidize cars for the rich. Phase all of this shit out tomorrow, I don't care.
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If it's the rich who use it, then they already pay more taxes than the not rich, even after the government gives them back the EV rebate amount (if you don't pay taxes the government doesn't give you any rebates for buying an EV).
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The US Army is heavily subsidizing electric and hydrogen systems for tanks - making troop movements more stealthy, better accelerating and less dependent on a supply/repair line is any army's dream.
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They repeatedly vote for the idiots who think it's prudent for the US to wage 7 wars at the same time and be the world police, so I have no sympathy for them either. The bill will come down some once Trump unwinds the war engagements, denuclearizes NK, and makes our NATO "allies" pay 2% of their GDP like they're supposed to.
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IOW, never.
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oil $ (Score:2)
We need oil sold in US $ simply to keep propping up that history which adds value to the US $ and at a time when it's going to need it more than it used do.
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Sure.
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Make a new company... (Score:5, Interesting)
Make a new company, sell the IP & plant to the new company for $1.
TeslA check ...
TeslB
TeslC
Profit :)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special-purpose_entity
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This is a CNN story so it is probably fake right?
Only if you get your information from an entertainment network that explicitly dodges liability for it's lies because it's "not a news station" or are gullible enough to believe what a documented compulsive liar tells you.
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Big word there is 'when'. So far nobody has because Tesla-style EV's are still a niche. You either cram so much batteries in it that it becomes prohibitively expensive or you don't and you have a 50 mile range (what GM tried) or you come with an anemic hybrid so mechanically complicated (drivetrain with both ICE and an electric motor) it is going to be prohibitively expensive to maintain long term (Toyota).
The biggest problem is for the largest markets you'll continue needing an ICE due to issues with energ
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Further proof that conservatives just hate Tesla.
When Tesla is unprofitable (even with "inflated" prices) they say Tesla is a sham that can't make money so we shouldn't be subsidizing a failed business model.
When those "inflated" (subsidized) prices finally help build a sustainable business suddenly it's proof that they never needed subsidies and Tesla was always going to succeed anyway.
The same is said of wind power and solar. We shouldn't offer solar\wind subsidies because they're a dead end waste of mon
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Guy: How much are these bricks?
Dude: The more you buy, the cheaper they are.
Guy: Okay then, fill up my pickup truck bed until they're free.