GM and Fiat Chrysler Unmasked as Tesla’s Source of Cash | Hacker News Reader

GM and Fiat Chrysler Unmasked as Tesla’s Source of Cash

bloomberg.com

122 pointsthenaturalist132 comments

> they reached agreements to buy federal greenhouse gas credits from Tesla.

In other words it's not much of a statement about Tesla, it's just a credit system working as intended. Tesla has credits left over because they don't sell ICE cars, GM predicts that if the next president is Democrat they might need more credits so they buy now while they are cheap.

Given that Tesla can supply those credits owing to its role as the first car producer to massively push EV over ICE technology and hence not produce common costs (CO2 emissions), this is a statement about Tesla and its position in the car industry in my book.

It's not a technological breakthrough, but in a world where common costs will be more factored into the balance sheets of those who create them, the fact that Tesla can be on the sell side of this and the trend to further quantify those costs might position them well.

It's not a technological achievement. It's a political one, as the middle class gets to subsidize the autopilot of the upper class, while the upper class gets to feel smug as though it's saving the world.

Or you can look from the other side: people who buy cars that pollute air pay for the development of better cars.

The whole point is it's not a subsidy, it's properly assigning costs.

Up until now ICE manufacturers and users havent being paying for the full costs of that technology, everyone has been subsidising them, this is designed to cancel that subsidy out.

It's better assigning costs, but still bad. A carbon tax is really the only way that works.

Society subsidized $10k on a Tesla purchase for someone to commute to work, but offered no incentive to take public transport, carpool or work remotely.

It's a shame that it's such a hard sell politically.

True, but don't let good be the enemy of perfect.

For a potential car buyer, this is a good incentive to steer them towards better choices.

Btw, it isn't society subsidising Tesla, its GM and Fiat Crysler customers. Or are you talking about tax credits? Perhaps? But on the other hand they were still paying more than what an equivalent ICE car would cost, so it isn't a free ride for them either. In the end society hopefully gets a sustainable EV industry, at a lower cost than if the government had done it themselves, isn't that what we should be comparing it against?

> Btw, it isn't society subsidising Tesla

It isn't? Who paid for that $7500 tax credit?

"Btw, it isn't society subsidising Tesla, its GM and Fiat Crysler customers. Or are you talking about tax credits?"

You edited the comment, only the first sentence was there when I responded.

My comment hasn't been edited.

It is society subsidizing Tesla, because the negative externalities of GM and Fiat customers are both borne by everyone, but the transfer payments in compensation are paid to Tesla, not society as a whole.

I'm not saying it's a bad thing, and if we can't get a carbon tax I'll take what I can get. But let's call a spade a spade.

I do think we are missing out in a big way by not tipping the balance of hybrid TCO (eg a Camry) from slightly above to slightly below their equivalent models. Even a small tax could do that and it would make a much bigger difference than EVs have to date (but of course not in the long run).

> the negative externalities of GM and Fiat customers are both borne by everyone, but the transfer payments in compensation are paid to Tesla, not society as a whole

If the transfer payments mean Teslas become cheaper or more available, and therefore more people drive EVs, wouldn't that negate the negative externalities of using petrol vehicles?

It just reduces the negative externalities; the result of ZEV credits is a pool of cars, some ICE and some EV, that in total have reduced emissions compared to if all of the cars were ICE.

But they still have significant emissions, and society isn't being compensated for them.

It's better than doing nothing, but that's about all the praise I'll give it!

"It is society subsidizing Tesla, because the negative externalities of GM and Fiat customers are both borne by everyone"

Could you not then argue that Tesla owners are subsidising everyone else by bearing of lowering emissions which benefits everyone else?

> For a potential car buyer, this is a good incentive to steer them towards better choices.

Talking about a "potential car buyer" is assuming your conclusion. If the outcome is going to be a car then you're steering them in the right direction. But you're also steering them away from non-car choices that would likely be better for society.

> Or are you talking about tax credits? Perhaps? But on the other hand they were still paying more than what an equivalent ICE car would cost, so it isn't a free ride for them either.

It is a free ride - taxpayers subsidize them buying a personal car, whatever their personal motivations for that choice were. And it's disproportionately the well-off who benefit.

> In the end society hopefully gets a sustainable EV industry, at a lower cost than if the government had done it themselves, isn't that what we should be comparing it against?

It is essentially the government doing it themselves - ultimately public money is being pumped into these EV companies in the same way as if they were a part-nationalised industry, with all the problems that that implies. The goal shouldn't be electric cars, the goal should be pollution reduction - imagine putting the same amount of subsidy towards e.g. bicycles for poorer inner-city residents.

"It is a free ride - taxpayers subsidize them buying a personal car"

But they're being subsidised to buy a more expensive car. The aim is to bring it in line with other more expensive cars.

It isn't $10000 off the default option, it's $10000 off the better for society option to bring it more in line with the default option. If it works as intended the buyer doesn't save money.

I suppose you could structure it to favour those with lower incomes, it would be more costly, more complicated, and I'm not sure how you could get to a sustainable model as quickly. Poorer people would presumably want cheaper cars, but currently EVs are expensive, so you would need to subsidise them that much longer, and potentially right about now you'd have cross subsidy anyway, with rich buyers buying expensive cars with R&D paid for with government subsidy money.

We can talk about alternatives to car, that isn't where politics is at, and I'm not sure tax credits would be a particularly good tool for encouraging alternatives. As I said don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

> It isn't $10000 off the default option, it's $10000 off the better for society option to bring it more in line with the default option.

Again you're assuming the default option is buying a car. Society shouldn't be paying people to buy cars, especially rich people: that's not a good thing to incentivise.

> We can talk about alternatives to car, that isn't where politics is at, and I'm not sure tax credits would be a particularly good tool for encouraging alternatives.

Surely if you believe tax credits work for electric cars then you should believe they would work for other things too.

> As I said don't let perfect be the enemy of good.

Is it even good though? It's hard to believe that paying rich people to buy cars (which still have negative externalities - land use, congestion, traffic deaths) is a better-than-replacement-level use of public funds.

How narrowly do you you want me to word it, for better or worse buying a car is the default. I'm not saying I like it.

Bicycles are relatively cheaper, I suspect the barrier to cycling isn't cost. Its infrastructure, culture, etc.

Tech always starts at the high end, then comes down to everyone. R&D has to be subsidized some how, this is the common cycle. With wars over oil, pollution, environmental destruction it seems like we've all been subsidizing our desire for cheap energy for sometime. Credits appear to be a lot more efficient to me.

If it _worked_ to reduce our overall carbon emissions, I wouldn't see this as a problem. As right now the pain of future generations is "subsidizing" our cheap energy and technology -- and as the shit hits the fan, I guarantee the rich will still be the most insulated from the pain by their wealth. We got to find some way to deal with climate change and our destruction of the environment, and any way is going to make energy and tech more expensive for everyone. Because it is cheaper to not worry about the devastation we are wreaking."externalized costs".

I just don't think it really works, it's just financial games in which the rich, as usual, profit the most. The owners of GM and Fiat Chrysler as much as the owners of Tesla.

If you can afford a brand new SUV, you can afford to pay the costs of your pollution.

It's an expedient choice. A more efficient mechanism would be to use a carbon tax to fully capture the externalities of energy use so that the market makes decisions with full information. But $10 or $20 per gallon gas would lead to riots in the streets.

I'd ride my bike everywhere at that price.

The middle class enjoy the benefits of subsidies to the oil industry already. They are also getting cheaper prices due to the political resistance of including the costs of atmospheric carbon dioxide to the planet.

If the middle class would be willing to pay a carbon tax, then the current system would be needed.

I believe you meant to say "then the current system wouldn't be needed".

What you meant to say is that finally, politics has achieved something. The externalities of ICE are finally being paid for by the users of ICE.

The middle class can buy Model 3s and get the tax credit as well. And the top 25% paid 85.97% of total income tax in 2016. So I think you have it backwards.

And possibly an illustration for the public of how the system was intended to work.

I'm not sure everyone quite understands that one big difference between a cap-and-trade type system and a simple excise tax is that an excise tax puts constant downward pressure on pollution, while the cap-and-trade type system only encourages the industry to reduce their externalities to whatever level the government picked as a target.

But if the government picked a tax rate, they'd likely do it with a forecast in mind of what externality would remain, so it only makes a difference in as far as there's uncertainty, and then only until the next round of permit quantities is picked.

If Tesla were serious about advancing sustainable transport, they wouldn't sell credits to polluters. By enabling others to pollute that much more, it undoes much of the benefit from buying a Tesla.

"We can go bankrupt, or we can let our polluting competitors fund our R&D. Which should we choose?"

"Oh, definitely the bankruptcy."

It's amazing how many here are so disconnected from reality....

(ps. the id of the person you are replying to :D )

This is true. It is a subtle problem with carbon offsets that is hard to understand intuitively even if it's logically straightforward. It makes being a truly "Green" consumer difficult when a "Green" producer can turn around and sell carbon offsets or the like based on the product you purchased.

Thats under the assumption that without Tesla they'd make electric cars which is a bad assumption because they are building their biggest competitor which is their worse nightmare.

A more likely idea would be that without tesla they'd just pay the taxes or lobby for them to be lower citing the fact that they can't hit the goal like they have been in other places like the EU.

There’s uncertainty at the Federal level, but at the State level, the CA ZEV credits program (which has also been adopted by 9 other states representing in total ~30% of new car sales) will be the tail that wags the dog;

”Manufacturers are required to produce a number of ZEVs and plug-in hybrids each year, based on the total number of cars sold in California by the manufacturer. Manufacturers with higher overall sales of all vehicles are required to make more ZEVs. Requirements are in terms of percent credits, ranging from 4.5% in 2018 to 22% by 2025”

https://www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/zevprog/factsheets/zev_regulat...

About 75% of GMs current credit balance comes from TZEV vehicles, but TZEVs are phased out and an increasingly large share of credits must be BEV going forward;

https://cdn.motor1.com/images/mgl/VZ44G/s1/carb-zev-percenta...

> GM’s credit purchases illustrate how challenging the U.S. fuel efficiency requirements are getting, even for automakers that are adding more zero-emission vehicles to their lineup.

Hardly. It mostly illustrates how many trucks and SUVs they sell.

It’s not hard to make those fuel efficient, it’s hard to make them fuel efficient cheaply all while maintaining the performance that customers expect.

The Federal regulations are based on a fleet wide average emissions. Large trucks and SUVs will always, ipso facto, have higher average emissions than sedans and compact cars. If your product mix skews to SUVs and trucks — and they aren’t EV — then your fuel efficiency numbers will in aggregate be higher.

Efficiency technology shifts the whole emissions curve down across the fleet. The curve invariably goes up and to the right when graphed against gross curb weight, regardless of emissions technology.

The targets were set with the assumption of a shrinking truck and SUV market. When gas was pushing above $4/ga and everyone was saying it could hit $8 there was even a time when that started to happen. But at $3/ga the consumer preference is strongly skewed toward larger vehicles, higher off the ground.

How much was it the assumption of a shrinking large vehicle market and how much was it a push for shrinkage?

It's hard to convince customers that they don't need huge SUV or pickup truck to drive solo to work in the office. On top of that there is clear, design trend especially in pickup truck world to have biggest, most vertical grill that is possible. Moving such wall trough the air at highway speed is far from efficient. No matter how badly Fiat wants to sell cars like small and efficient Fiat 500, Tipo, Alfa Romeo Giulia etc. that can be sleek and good for environment, in USA they will mostly sell huge RAMs, Jeeps and muscle cars.

When you sell a work truck for $25k and as much as $60k for a fully equipped fancypants truck, you aren't going to be very motivated to convince anyone of anything other than buying more fancy trucks.

Some of these trucks are being driven solo by people who live on an onion farm just FYI. Also, my truck gets better mileage than a Giulia. I live in the midwest and sure there are guys who don't need a truck but most of us do.

My metric is always, "Does your truck still look new after you've been driving it for awhile?"

It fails for the towing use-case, but I feel like if your truck isn't being abused you probably aren't using its hauling or off-road capabilities to any significant degree.

I can pretty much guarantee a beat up old FWD car will tackle pretty much all towing and farm driving (having lived and worked on a farm). For the really gritty stuff on the farm you have your tractors and earth movers and whatnot.

What makes the biggest difference is the tyres you have on a vehicle are suitable for the terrain you are using them in.

In the US, Australia, Canada etc - pick up trucks or utes are just a symbol of working class just as much as Tesla and Prius's are for the green-friendly crowd.

Eh, there are applications. A pickup truck mostly becomes necessary when you need to do both "heavy" and "far", when your alternatives are a car and a tractor. There are some loads, eg, towing a livestock trailer to market, where it is too heavy for a car (or even too small of a truck) to tow, and a tractor would be infeasible from a "speed" perspective.

(But yeah, you definitely don't need to be using your 4x4 pickup as a people-mover most of the time, and even most hauling applications a truck performs can be handled by a car with a rather modest trailer.)

Correct. But if you already have a truck that seats 4 or 6, there's not a whole lot of incentive to buy a car for commuting.

Really? What kind of "beat up old FWD car" would you recommend to pull a 7,000lb horse trailer and two Clydesdales?

I agree and I'll take that a step further yet. You can do it with RWD. I worked on a farm as well, and farm or not, we made it through many winters with RWD cars too. People have no idea anymore about what is actually required to get things done. I have friends who live in a city or town, and think they need 4x4 or AWD in the winter. Even out in the sticks, studded tires or chains do wonders in the winter, and on the farm you're either taking the dirtbike (or ATV) to get to the confinements or if you need to move a lot of hay.

"Trucks were built for a purpose, and some folks use trucks to fulfill that purpose!" Hmm, imagine that, Midwestern farm folk using trucks to haul shit. Now let's go take a look in the beds of the pickups in the parking lot of my suburban workplace and see if we can find any scratches, trucks that were driven by a solo driver with no passenger and nothing in the bed.

That's why I specifically said about office job. If you need your truck for work, haulin onions or for your hobby like mountain bike etc. then that's great, this is the actual truck for you but there is huge amount of people that are using them to get groceries at most. Another thing is, why you need to buy that, huge RAM, wouldn't just a normal height car like australian style pickups aka UTEs (kind of modern El Camino) be sufficient to get your onions/mountain bike to your destination? I don't know the truck you are driving but base model of F150 have a highway fuel consumption of 26 US mpg, base Gulia have 39 US mpg, that's a bit of a difference.

I hate this about HN — the preachiness. People are generally good at evaluating their own needs and spending their own money. If a truck wasn’t valuable and useful, so many people wouldn’t buy one.

Maybe it’s “city slickers” not understanding that a lot of people own boats, or trailers, or jet skis, or just plain haul shit every day and they need a bed in the back and real towing capacity that will handle well with a trailer attached on the highway.

If you don’t have a lawn, so much as a lawn service, I guess it’s easy to forget why anyone would need or want a truck?

Looking forward to the Rivian and Tesla trucks hitting production and for so many minds to be blown by how much fun and how capable they are.

Don't forget to take into account that fuel economy standards get more and more lax as GVW increases in a step-wise fashion (at least in the US). If you look at historical data, cars and trucks have been increasing in size and GVW at a rapid pace.

Car companies are quite literally incentivized to make larger vehicles (and pass that materials cost onto us) while lowering R&D costs for their powertrains, and as a result, killing the environment even faster.

Thanks, I wasn’t aware of the “footprint” based calculation in the 2012 CAFE standards.

https://energyathaas.wordpress.com/2016/01/25/new-cafe-stand...

~$200M/year, and it isn't a strategic cash infusion, they have to.

"Tesla has generated almost $2 billion in revenue from selling regulatory credits since 2010"

"If [other car-] manufacturers don’t sell enough non-polluting vehicles, they have to purchase credits from competitors like Tesla to make up the difference."

How much is that relatively?

TLSA 2018 revenue: $21B net income: -$1B

> ~$200M/year, and it isn't a strategic cash infusion, they have to.

$420m last year and rising steadily.

I wonder who brokers these things.

Yeah I can imagine a marketplace driven by demand/supply logistics. Short of saying Uber for ZEV/carbon credits :)

Tesla has received more in regulatory credit revenue alone, than their entire market cap at the time of the IPO. Of course the company has grown massively since then, both in market cap and revenue, but it's worth stating just to put this into perspective.

Wasn't this reported two months ago? https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/8/18300393/tesla-fiat-chrysl...

That was EU credit, this is US credit.

Something is not working with this carbon credit market, the article says demand for electric cars is not there so the auto makers can't generate their own credits. Yet people who are into EV cars view the big three as well as the German marques as not even trying.

I bet that selling the credits was never in the Tesla business plan. But it is now!

It sounds like the cost of the credits is not high enough to make a real dent.

Another effective way of doing this is adding the cost of pollution into the price of the car as tax making ICE expensive and electric cheap. That is done here and the demand is very high. ICEs generally have > 100% tax.

Where is 'here'? Let me guess, Norway?

Correct :)

>the article says demand for electric cars is not there

I'd see it more as, the demand for electric utility vehicles and industrial transportation systems (truck, etc.) is so great that the demand for personal EV transportation cannot supplant the economies of maintaining an ICE production line.

But, as the article explains this may change in the close to near future, and indeed the technology to supplant the former segments of transportation is definitely on the horizon.

Take this with a grain of salt, but I happen to know that automobile clubs around the world expect that within 5 years, the automotive industry will be radically different to what it is today - they, too, are hedging their bets, and investing in social-sharing technology for the clubs to be promoting when the tech, and consumer expectations around personal transportation, inevitably changes.

> Something is not working with this carbon credit market, the article says demand for electric cars is not there so the auto makers can't generate their own credits.

Just low quality articles - most other car makers have long delivery times for EV due to demand, 6 to 18 months in some cases. Their real problem is that they can't or don't want (negative margin?) to produce in quantities.

Let's see. Long delivery times due to demand that exceeds supply. Margin pressure on the product. I wonder what Microeconomics 101 suggests the path forward for a supplier caught in that trap? It's been a while since I took Econ, but I think the answer is maybe raising prices? Tends to align demand with supply and improve unit economics.

This would be the correct choice in a simplified scenario without considering the competition, but car makers know how it'd work out: Tesla would sell even more cars and they'd sell none. Why are they doing what they're doing? Possibly because they want to slow down Tesla's growth and virtue-signal a little without losing too much money. I'm not sure it's working very well for Jaguar and Audi at the moment.

warning, I ramble quickly

Because the market isn't there. I know we like to believe otherwise but the majority do not care. They will reply to a survey with what the expect the person asking wants but at the end of the day they have no reason to change their buying habits.

I really enjoy my Tesla 3 but I am a fan of sedans and coupes. The Y will make it more useful to some but even then it won't solve the immediate issue. That for all their supposed warts petrol powered cars don't require you to change anything you are currently doing. The habits we have established over generations are so ingrained that the time spent fueling and maintenance is not an issue. Now of course they could just plug in at home but people see the costs for charging station installs and say screw it. Infrastructure won't fix this. EV's just don't match petrol cars in common capability in the eyes of shoppers.

Finally, there just isn't enough coverage of the type of vehicles people are buying let alone at any reasonable price. Don't get fixated on the average selling price of cars to determine where an EV should be priced. Vehicles not clean sheet designed to be EV show their failings right up front and cause people to price compare to the petrol version; this includes the Chevrolet Bolt, the Hyundai and Kia cars, and even the Audi and Jaguar cars. Those last two are both incredibly disappointing on range.

Range also is only considered valid for fair weather or better. Get into the 40F/4C ranges and watch your range go goodbye. I can travel anywhere in the US easily with the 3 without concern but not in winter, I do damn well better than any other maker's EV in that regard. Range needs to be much higher to offset any concern owners have, to let them be lazy in charging. Charging speeds aren't too much of an issue but will be once range comes up.

Another option in the range category is, get mid one hundred mile range models out but get them as close to 20k without tax incentives. that might get some of the local only crowd to jump but that is a very price sensitive area.

Infrastructure is absolutely the deciding factor for those of us who are not suburban home owners. I live in a building which has 1 EV space for 200-something units. I work in an office building which has 2 EV spaces installed, but they're reserved for the Tesla-driving building owners. There are no public charging stations remotely convenient to either location.

My next car will absolutely be a Prius/Insight/Ioniq, but a full EV is not a reasonable consideration, and not because of range or habits but 100% because of infrastructure. Despite a majority-freeway commute I still pass 5 or 6 gas stations going to and from work every day. I ought to be passing at least one charging station.

I daily drive an electric for the last 4.5 years. I can't see what possible good passing a charging station on my highway commute would do me. If the car isn't going to naturally rest there, that charging station is only useful for emergencies, IMO.

(I bought the LEAF with the intent to mostly charge at home. Since then, our company moved and we have chargepoints at work, but I agree with your overall point that no charging at home or work is a deal-breaker. I disagree that that is meaningfully ameliorated if there was an intra-commute charging station.)

> I can't see what possible good passing a charging station on my highway commute would do me.

Helping people not driving an electric understand that charging stations exist and are in abundance, thereby alleviating concerns that an electric will leave them stranded. I know where at least ten gas stations are in my normal driving radius, and where some are in adjacent towns. I have no clue where the nearest charging station is, even though I'm aware that some exist. To the average person, it appears as though charging stations don't exist at all and gas stations are in abundance. It's a mindshare thing.

I'm not sure that "here's a place where you could park and charge for 2 hours in the middle of your commute home" is a positive influence for adoption.

Well, remember that "range anxiety" is more about "I wouldn't buy an electric because what if I have to make a 200 mile trip?" than "I'm worried it won't make it to my office 15 miles away." The fact that electric charging stations are essentially hidden from view reinforces the notion that an electric car would be a horrible choice because it would be unable to handle anything other than in-city commuting (and remember that not everyone has the luxury of buying a car for tooling around town and one for lengthier trips, hence the desire to have one car that "does it all").

Keeping charging stations hidden from view reinforces the notion that you're SOL for long-range trips. Having them be visible and in abundance, even though they wouldn't need them often, would go a long way towards reassuring people that charging stations aren't these incredibly rare things that you won't be able to find when you really need one.

If you have an 80 mile electric (as I do), take your second ICE car or rent an ICE car. No one is going to add 2 3-hour charging sessions (at 24 miles of charge per hour) into a 200 mile road trip and be happy about it.

well to be fair, with a Tesla Model 3 it's not "park and charge for 2 hours", it's "park and charge for <20 minutes" in most cases. (assuming it's at a tesla supercharger)

I feel like throwing out exact numbers is disingenuous at best since a lot of things vary charge rate (state of charge, temperature, type of charger, etc...), but 20 minutes will almost always get you to the next charger or a destination in the Model 3.

And while I agree it's not quite "charge on your way home from work", it is something that at least Tesla is working on. Their "Supercharger v3" stalls cuts the stop times roughly in half in the ideal situations. And IMO "stop for 10 minutes on the way home" is absolutely acceptable.

Yes, but the Tesla Model 3 already has enough range for most to charge 2x per week at most. It's the $20K 80 mile electrics that have legitimate range anxiety issues, not the $40K 200 mile electrics.

My LEAF has a fast charger (CHAdeMO) and a 6.6kW Level 2 charger. My car has seen a CHAdeMO charger exactly once in its lifetime and that was before delivery. Most non-Teslas are charging at 3.3 or 6.6 kW (~12 or ~24 miles per hour of charge).

How sure are you that you aren't? Compared to gas stations, which require a large underground tank to hold gasoline (and diesel), a small electric charging station may require little additional infrastructure and are often rather utilitarian - no awning and no convenience store, just a charger behind a parking spot or two. They are often tucked away behind a restaurant in rest stops next to gas stations, and not always visible from the main road. (Fortunately the Tesla's dashboard knows where they are.)

> hey are often tucked away behind a restaurant in rest stops next to gas stations, and not always visible from the main road.

Perhaps they need to be, because to the average person it seems as if there is a complete dearth of charging stations.

another issue is, even if there are charging stations in convenient locations, what do you do if you get there and all the slots are being used. I rarely, if ever, have to wait to fill up at the gas station, and when I do it takes less than five minutes for the car in front of me to finish filling up. worse case scenario is I wait for the other person to buy a bag of chips inside the station.

it takes about an hour to charge a tesla most of the way full at a supercharger. no one is gonna wait that long with their car. who knows when they'll be back?

>it takes about an hour to charge a tesla most of the way full at a supercharger.

while you aren't wrong (it's actually much longer than an hour from low-charge to 100%!), there is a caveat that charging in the 20-80% range is significantly faster, so stopping at a supercharger for more than 30 minutes is almost always slower than only charging the range which can charge most quickly and move on to the next one or your destination. And because of that Tesla has begun limiting max charge at busy supercharger locations to help prevent the issue of no stalls being available in the first place.

The superchargers are also networked and you can see how many stalls are open at any time, which really helps relieve any anxiety i had about it. Many other charging networks (like Chargepoint) are networked as well, and can show you how many are available, and even peak usage times.

>Range also is only considered valid for fair weather or better. Get into the 40F/4C ranges and watch your range go goodbye.

This is the biggest concern for me and by extension I assume many others who live in the South of the United States. It's May and temperatures are not yet topping 40C but they're 32+ at the high and projected to stay that way for months. Even with Tesla's heat management and water cooling for their batteries this potentially means slowed charging rates at superchargers and less range because you have to constantly cool the interior.

I thought GM did a great job with the Volt. My Dad has one. He usually only drives around town, so he never needs gas. But the car has a range of 400+ miles on a full charge and tank of gas. He says the switch from the electric motor is seamless.

It seemed like it really solved the range issue while being a true “plug-in” electric vehicle for daily use.

I think he paid $33k.

It completely failed in the market.

Not sure what to make of that.

That is a nice analysis, but tbh, I think it overlooks the big pricing problem that is really at the core of it all. Make the SR+ a 20K car and people would flock to it. As it is, it might struggle to sell more than 300K units per year. But then again, the BMW 3 series only sells about 400k per year at similar price points. The Model Y looks sort of like a cheaper BMW X6. The X6 moves ~50K units per year.

The price points, models, and distribution/service channel limit unit volume more than differences in the operating model of EVs.

"Demand is not there"

"25,913% Growth In Tesla Sales In 6 Years"

I don't know how people reconcile these kinds of statements. Unless they're arguing that Q1 2019 is an inflection point and sales will taper off for the foreseeable future?

https://cleantechnica.com/2018/10/04/25913-growth-in-tesla-s...

Isn't that basically what happened? [0]

[0] https://insideevs.com/news/343787/tesla-sales-down-for-q1-20...

No. You cite an article that falsely compares sales and delivery numbers. It's deliveries on already sold cars that slowed.

If it was, it isn't at all clear from the data. Model S and Model X slowed dramatically, and that part might be indicative of a real problem with those two models. Model 3, OTOH, appears to be growing steadily right now.

The two assertions may not be in conflict. There may not be demand for EVs that are rehashes of ICE designs (and not just in “looks” but also in engineering compromises made to retrofit EV to a body originally intended for an ICE). Also, there may truly not be sufficient demand for EV in the bread and butter market segments traditional “mature” automakers address (and corporate/union socio-political factors might stifle an internally created Tesla, similar to what happened to Saturn in GM).

To put things into perspective: Despite 26000% growth... Tesla still has less than 1% of the global auto market.

The carbon credits market is designed to impose a cap on the level of CO2 of the car fleet. I would hope that it's agnostic about specific technologies, as it's meant to incentivise manufacturers to find the best way of meeting the cap, eg another option would be to produce smaller cars like they use in the rest of the world, rather than massive trucks.

The fact that companies are going out, buying credits, subsidising lower emitters says to me that the systems working perfectly.

Regulatory assistance was always a huge part of Tesla’s business plan. Whether it is on the consumer side (rebates) or corporate side (credits).

As for demand, you are missing the big picture of the technology adoption curve. There is a massive learning curve which needs to be climbed in terms of producing EVs and particularly batteries at the scale required. Never mind the charging infrastructure or changing consumer habits. The market is growing as fast as possible and is totally supply constrained and will be likely for the next decade plus.

It’s not that the big 3 aren’t even trying. It’s that they can’t try. If you are buying 3rd-party assembled batteries and motors to put into your EVs you are likely able to produce a meaningless number of units at a near zero or negative margin. They were never going to invest the $20 billion in R&D to canabalize themselves. It always had to be an outsider who would have to make the push.

Toyota has spent billions on alternative fuels and green tech cars. The Prius is single handedly the reason that a market for Teslas and other EVs exist.

> The Prius is single handedly the reason that a market for Teslas and other EVs exist.

Can you elaborate on this please? I would never own or drive a Prius, or really a hybrid of any kind. I do own a Model 3. I see it as polar opposite to a hybrid.

The Prius showed that there was a large market for green cars. The largest group of Tesla Model 3 buyers is former Prius owners.

Without the Prius to pave the way, Tesla would never exist, because nobody would have invested in an EV company without the Prius proof.

Sounds like it works perfectly. A huge new all america car company is reaping large benefits while research and developing world class EVs up and into the point it kills off some of the legacy automakers.

Not the first time an established car manufacturer prevents Tesla from dying. Ten years ago, in 2009, Daimler Benz invested about 50 million USD into Tesla for a 9% stake. This saved them. Not my words, but Elon's: https://www2.greencarreports.com/news/1074375_elon-musk-daim...

Daimler-Benz itself was created to prevent imminent death of two automobile makers

did not prevent death,,US took over retirement plans of two automakers..that is death right there no matter what the remains become as it means you have more retirees than workers..ie firm decline

The poster was referring to a different time:

Because of the post World War One German economic crisis, DMG merged in 1926 with Benz & Cie., becoming Daimler-Benz and adopting Mercedes-Benz as its automobile trademark.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daimler_Motoren_Gesellschaft

Indeed I was

> They also represent the first acknowledgments from carmakers that they’re turning to Tesla for help to comply with intensifying U.S. environmental regulations.

I don't know how you manage to spin the article the opposite way. If anything is bailing out Tesla, it's the US govt providing the credits, not car manufacturers.

Established car makers have established themselves so well by not paying for the health and environmental damage their products cause. We have all subsidized them by paying to deal with their mess (in cash and in consequences).

To frame this as if GM has paid own its way and made its fortune without help, and now is benevolently helping Tesla, is misleading.

So does this mean all those zero emission Tesla’s are actually generating lots of emissions but just via another manufacturer?

No.

I’d assume it’s an “offset” right? So not making things “better” - just not as “bad”

It's making things better by directly funding the killing of the ICE vehicle industry. That money is coming out of the pockets of the ICE automakers and being injected into Tesla, which is actively trying to replace the ICE approach.

It's helping to enable the build-up of EVs and replacement of the ICE auto industry. It has a rather considerable roll-on effect when you consider the sprawling consequences, such as helping to fund Tesla's ability to build a global charging network which can then enable it to more easily appeal to consumers to sell more EVs and on it goes in dozens of other ways.

Maybe, I haven't reviewed the numbers in detail - but the need for GM/others to purchase the credits at the rate they do, enables them to continue pushing the ICE autos - possibly increasing the overall market supply, which in turn is just as bad / worse? Something to watch, for sure.

No, it means that the polluters end up subsidizing development of cleaner vehicles.

Otherwise, Teslas would be more expensive.

No because that would assume they would make those cars without tesla. The more obvious future without tesla would they'd still produce the cars. There'd be no big america EV company. And they'd lobby to lower the tax burdent citing the inability to hit emission target. You can't for consumers to want Evs from thse companies.

Yup. Thts how carbon credits work. None of the 'no' zelots care to explin themselves.

Environmental Credits seem more like a scheme than anything else. It sounds like politicians giving lip service to the people while keeping lobbyists happy.

Regardless, it’s nice to see GM and FCA are benefiting Tesla is some ways. It would be really interested to see a powered by Tesla GM/FCA car. Tesla provides engines and battery and the other carmaker makes a car around it. A partnership with a huge car company could help Tesla with production issues and provide a cash boost.

It is a scheme, that internalizes what otherwise would have been an external cost (environmental impact) for GM & Fiat (and the other manufacturers). This should provide them at least some incentive to improve their environmental impact.

I would say that cap and trade is a fairly popular solution to curbing externalities in the field of economics.

If the caps would be reduced by meaningful amounts every year so that we reach carbon neutrality in fifteen years or so that would be true. But nobody is doing that.

Cap & Trade is weird.

How are the caps set, based on what?

And the system doesn't even reimburse the people who bear the externalized cost.

If you want to address an externality, just address it directly by fee & dividend.

A scheme that is working as intended. Producers of pollution are supporting (or almost forced to support)greener competitors.

Bloomberg revealing another Big Secret without citing sources? Why should I believe them?

I also have difficulty believing anything bloomberg puts out after what had happened.

With all the independent investigations and the lack evidence found, I'm baffled that they still haven't admitted their mistake and issued a redaction.

What would they issue a retraction for?

Their Huawei article has been borne out by subsequent developments.

SuperMicro, not Huawei. A story for which I've not seen one single shred of not-flacid evidence.

I'm unaware of this scandal care to elaborate?

Bloomberg unleashed this bombshell of a story about a supply chain attack on Supermicro, which supplies servers to some big-name companies. Except... literally everyone else says it didn't happen, and didn't make sense in the first place.

https://hackaday.com/2019/05/14/what-happened-with-supermicr...

Bloomberg doubled down, but still didn't actually provide any evidence, and there the matter has lain.

Tesla sells invisible objects. Elon Musk is truly brilliant.

I'm continually baffled by wide-spread inability of the software(!)/tech crowd here and elsewhere to grasp the idea of non-physical concepts having meaning.

being able to buy yourself out of regulations... priceless.

That's the system working as intended - it forces companies to internalize the costs that previously were externalized.

That's the point of that regulation. Either you do get your things straight, or you are forced to support companies that already do.

Probably gets them some leverage for cheap takeover when Tesla collapses.

That might not be their main motivation, but still it is a conceivable outcome were Tesla to collapse. Not sure that leverage is quite the right word though - there’d be others that would want it (or rather the capability) to survive

they bought gas credits, not Tesla

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