Featured Gavin Newsom to exclude Tesla from California EV credits

Curious .... what is the criteria for being "smaller". Anyone that have captured less than 50% of the market? Such as Lexus? Bmw? Lucid? Rivian? MB? Many of these are only purchasable by folks making 6 figures & higher. Who qualifies as a maker of el Cheapo electric cars if we're not going to include the pricey ones.
.

 

gm? hyundai? nissan?

 

No details(perhaps check the links or google for one self), just that the exclusion is based on market share. Could think of it as an inversion of previous EV and hybrid credits. Instead of 'company gets the credit for X number of cars sold from start' it's 'company loses the credit once X cars sold, counting the ones sold before start'.

Musk said Tesla doesn't need the credit, and sales weren't hurt when they lost the first credit, so he should be fine with this.

 

How does one wrap their head around the notion that government is the best to decide a mediocre businesses or floundering businesses should be as successful as a superstar business. It flies in the face of the parable where the master expects success from three servants & gives one servant 5 bags of gold, another 2 bags of gold & one servant got one bag.
The servants with 2 bags & 5 bags double their Investments over the next year. The servant with one bag gives an account saying he feared losing it so he buried it. The master condemns the one gold bag servant saying that he could have at least put it in the bank & gotten interest for him - so he gives the one bag of gold to the servant that turned 5 into 10.
The story illustrates that the master has observed which entity is most likely to do best & entrusts the 3 accordingly.
Our modern-day government? Not so much.
.

 

Have another turkey leg and just enjoy yourself today, Gary.

☮️

 

Let's all be grateful today!
& grateful in subsequent days from here on forward

.

 

How is a market cap limit different than MSRP limits, means testing, or any other way the EVs and customers that benefit from the incentive different?

 

You just made me think of a better way to Dole out taxpayer money. Highest EPA ratings per vehicle type?

 

Well, it depends on the government's priorities and goals. Those may or may not align with one's own priorities and goals.

One could argue that the success or failure of a particular company no longer is simply the existence or lack of earnest hard work. Sometimes doing nothing results in monopolies that crush all efforts of anyone else's attempts at being successful.

I do wonder if there had never been government incentives in the USA, China and the EU if Tesla would be the only EV company at this point with 100% EV marketshare. I guess we may find out if the 2025 President get's his way.

 

Tesla benefited from the ZEV program. Without the excess credits to sell, they would have needed more influxes of cash to keep going during the early stages.

 

Do you think Musk is a bit hypocritical for wanting to have the credits removed now that Tesla doesn't need them yet others might?

 

Maybe it's not the same thing. After all, major car companies have all their business up and running. They don't have to start completely from scratch. They have the benefit of their Gasser and truck businesses that can to some degree support the huge cost of EV startup.

 

It's a bit hypocritical to say you don't need credits, and then take offense when excluded from others.

 

With the exceptions of companies like Rivian, Lucid and Aptera. We have yet to see any other new EV startup start making profits instead of losses besides Tesla and Chinese brands.

Maybe cheaper batteries will help everyone. But aren't only Chinese batteries the cheap ones?

 

There are a few motorcycle EV startups & they seem to be making it okay.
10 Electric Motorcycles With The Best Range
Technically aptera too, is a motorcycle -
Three-wheeler - Wikipedia.
Whether or not musk is hypocritical is up for debate. He may very well be .... or not.
The Optics say Gavin newsom's motives are politically based and the referendum shows people see ideology as the basis of newsom threats. Ideology pushback is not exactly the same thing as a tantrum over not getting a piece of the possible CA incentive pie.
.

 

What EPA rating do you use for EVs? Range?

if so, EPA range divided by sticker price would probably work as a useful scoring mechanism for California's goals.

 

Unless there are unlimited funds, any incentive has to have a means of targeting the available funds to do the most good. The current federal one, and past California ones, have MSRP limits on what EVs qualify. Then it has goals besides getting EVs to consumers in the America source requirement, which work against getting people cheap EVs. Unfair to Toyota, VW, and Hyundai, but unfairness enters when exclusions are applied.

The old credit with set number of cars sold before ending for a manufacturer was unfair to the companies first offering EVs. Their efforts are what brought battery costs down, but the companies that waited reaped the benefit of that while getting profits from having incentives that the first companies lost. I don't recall a huge outcry against that old credit here, as Toyota was one of those waiters. A market cap limit is the same as number sold, with a higher number target that counts sales before the incentive start date.

China is the main source for cheap batteries. Their companies invested into LFP batteries early on, so are the big supplier for them. I think they are also the only ones selling sodium ion batteries.

Even the traditional car companies are having trouble in the EV business. They won't completely leave it, but the loss of the federal tax credit will slow down adoption in the US.

 

I used to live in California, and I'm currently employed by a California corporation, and visit a few times a year.

To my lying eyes the three most effective things California has done for air quality are:

1. their own fuel blend and tighter regulation of gasoline dispensing
2. Smog inspections of cars
3. allowing low emission (and later tightened to no-emission) vehicles to use carpool lanes even with only a single occupant.

That last one is huuuuge in terms of impact, and if you haven't seen it in action out there, you may not realize how big of a deal it is.

California commuters, particularly in L.A. and S.F. are utterly desperate for any advantage they can get vs. traffic congestion. Solo access to carpool lanes are a great carrot.

The program they use to allow non-carpool use by EVs has made an enormous impact, and one of the reasons why is that they have managed the program pretty tightly.

Crucially, nobody "has it made." Just because your EV qualifies you for lane access now does not mean it always will- once your registration hits a certain birthday, you're out and you can't get back in without a newer emission-free car.

This has worked wonders in terms of selling a lot of low/no emission cars and then passing them on to a secondary market while they are still pretty fresh. I think they should keep going with it.

 

We enjoyed the carpool benefit all the way back to the days of the 1990's S10 EV at work. Now though, the carpool lanes are just as packed as every other Lane in many instances if not most instances due to all the exceptions, and then there's the tons and tons of cheaters. A buddy had a part-time job with FedEx and they would ALWAYS have another employee sitting in the passenger seat in their carrier vehicles so they could get their packages to LAX quicker. But due to its congestion, often not.


LOL

 

^ I'm not sure what your use of that attachment is trying to convey, given that it only shows a carpool lane sign, rather than the roadway lane or any of the traffic to which it applies.

Several of my co-workers own qualifying cars and use those lanes daily. They tell me it's still worth it, typically saving them each >100 minutes per week.