Featured Tesla hits 200,000 U.S. Plug-in cars (GM soon)

congrats to tesla!

 

Congrats to Tesla!

Now we gotta wean them off the nipple and get them to eat big people food.

To their credit.....they're already planning for this.

 

And Don't Forget;
. . . this 200K milestone is JUST for the U.S.A. count. Their worldwide # is nearly double that. It won't be long now - w/ 5,000 pouring off the line every short order ... that the company will soon pass the ½ million cars milestone. Wow!! Whooda ever thunk - just 5 or 6 years ago that there'd be this many producers making EV's (with all the regulatory hurdles & ol' boy transportation systems), much less so many cars per producer. Very cool time to be alive.
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when do we wean big oil off the nipple?

 

are there zero special tax breaks for gasser manufacturers?

 

That may get as difficult as putting Al Capone out of business.
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I think the draw down of the credit ($3750 in first half 2019, $1875 in second half of 2019) should meet well with tesla bringing down battery and other manufacturing costs, just as toyota was able to bring down costs of hybrid technology. The problem is that those that dragged their feet will be getting the full $7500 in 2020 and perhaps beyond. Its rewarding wrong behavior which may start hurting Tesla and GM (which will hit next year) for US incentives for competitors. They probably should change the phase out, and kill it on a date certain, leaving Tesla and GM with some credit (maybe $2K) until its over.

 

Dot.gov isn't supposed to pick winners and losers.
We did that already.....and the result was a fire-sale in solar manufacturing technology and effectively if not literally zero domestic producers.
I personally would have put sunset date on ALL BEV subsidies - and indeed there may be such as that in the law.

You can't have it both ways round.
If Tesla starts cranking out 10,000 units a month, and they don't hit the proverbial brick wall of market saturation then the subsidies are simply not required because the electro-car will have proven itself to be viable in the real world, and the company that succeeds in the initial land grab will continue to evolve and improve, leaving Darwin to deal with the wanna-bes.

 

possibly, but it is easy to follow the koch brothers trail of fud, and large corporate pac money.
i would welcome the facts regarding oil subsidies, if anyone has them.
and our gas taxes are nothing compared to some parts of the world.

 

government picks winners and losers all the time. whether they are supposed to or not? i don't know where that is written. (except here)

 

Would have liked to have seen the phase out clock start for all manufacturers after the first manufacturer got to 200k, but perhaps begin the draw down 1-2 more quarters later than currently prescribed. That might have aligned carrot and stick incentives better than is currently playing out.

 

I agree with all of that, but you have got to get the people in the government (congress, the president, the DOE) to do it too. Current structure is for the government to pick winners and losers.

June tesla already cranked out more than 10K units for the US market, they just kept some in inventory to ship in July to get the subsidies for an extra 3 months. Absolutely agree that GM and Tesla when their tax credits run out, will have gotten manufacturing costs down enough on batteries (both panasonic/tesla in gigafactory, and lg chem for the volt and bolt which will sell to anyone) to establish plug-ins. GM and tesla timing isn't so different that GM getting it a little longer will hurt tesla.

My problem is the structure of the credit will be giving toyota, bmw, honda, etc big credits in 2021 and 2022 to export plug-ins to the US and get subsidies to under cut in price the car makers that invested to establish the technology. Close it after the first 2 or 3 (nissan should get there about 6 months after gm, and they produce in the US) and its ok. If you are keeping it open for slow moving importers and hurting domestic innovators, that is counter productive.

While we are at it, if tesla and GM combined are cranking out 20K plug-ins a month or more, it probably is time to sunset the fuel cell vehicle subsidies too, as the market will have chosen the winner in North America.

 

Lots of voters believe it, unfortunately the politicians don't (or only like it if its the loser they want to subsidize to pretend its a winner). I agree with etc and iplug, the incentives have been sucessful to establish the technology. The solution isn't to give a lot more to the innovators although a little more is ok, but to phase it out for the laggards.

Government money could still be used for Battery and Charging R&D, but this is a lot less money per year than current subsidies. Cell phones and laptops will drive R&D in the private sector, but there is the public(millitary and universities) and public/private (university incubators) that could really help with continued investment.

 

......even if it's WELL after the mid terms?

 

As far as this dues paying Democrat is concerned,"H*ll no!"

Now give every dealer $300-500 for each EV and plug-in sold, I'm OK with that. Heck, even $200 for a used EV with a 2 year, unlimited warranty.

Bob Wilson

 

dang - almost sounds like a conspiracy of sorts - where some manufacturers purposefully let all of casualties of earlybird developers win the war - taking all of the heavy losses, then those who did little or nothing get to swoop in and reap the benefits of battery chemistry & thermal management development. That would be pretty loathsome, & very telling of how little their real commitment is .... but then again, in the world of cutthroat dog eat dog business .... what can you say.
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