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Comment by jrbuhl | Hacker News Reader

Tesla payed a lot of money (billions) to build the super charger network. Money no government or other company seems to want to spend. Legislating away vendor lock-in would just cause companies to be even more averse to capital investment in recharging infrastructure.

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I'm pretty sure gas station networks weren't built with public money. And other companies are investing in charger networks: https://ionity.eu/ or https://www.electrifyamerica.com/index

At least in the EU I'm 99% sure that the EU will mandate (if it hasn't already) a standard charging interface. Don't know about the US, it's a bit like the Wild West in this regard...

The EU has a standard charging interface, Type 2 (AC) and CCS (DC). The Model 3 has both and most superchargers in Europe got retrofitted with CCS-Plugs. Cars of other manufacturers currently still cannot use it however.

Ionity just came out with a _500%_ increase in cost of charging starting in February.

https://electrek.co/2020/01/17/ionity-increases-electric-veh...

Tesla charges about €0.33/kWh at most in Europe whereas Ionity will be charging €0.79/kWh .. which will make EV charging even more expensive than gas at that point.

This type of crazy price structures are why none of the EV charging networks can get enough traction / users to actually be profitable and build even more stations.

Electrify America is mainly funded by VW as part of the Diesel-gate settlement. So not entirely voluntarily.

Elon has received billions from the US government across his companies. It'd be a slap in the face to the entire US population for Tesla to have a 100% proprietary charging network when we helped get the company going.

Did he? What kind of government money did Tesla get? I am not aware of any specific money paid to Tesla, only general benefits for electric cars, which were paid to the buyers, not Tesla. Not like GM, which got billions in a government-bailout, which they used to build their charging network /s.

You mean the $451.8M Department of Energy loan they used to buy the old NUMMI Toyata plant? Yeah.... They paid that off nine years early with interest. Try again.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/tesla-repays-department-energy-lo...

Meanwhile, why don't we talk about the GM bailout money?

If you can cite a source for the "billions" you mentioned, that would be great to read, since I must've missed that one.

I'm pretty sure that Tesla managed to get at least 400,000 cars sold in the US before fully phasing out of the tax credit. That's between 1.5 billion and 2.5 billion, depending upon how you estimate it.

EDIT: Also, this amounts to fewer than 50,000 cars in revenue. Sales restrictions in various states have probably cost them more in sales than they gained in tax benefits.

I'm not sure you understand how the BEV tax credit works. First of all, it's the customer that gets the refund NOT Tesla.

Second, the buyer has to owe enough in liabilities to be even be eligible for it.

I absolutely do understand that. But there are economic principles at play here too. A $7,500 rebate is effectively a lower price without costing the manufacturer anything.

While it is true that the buy has to meet the $7,500 threshold for that to work (which is not insignificant) for much of the lifespan of rebate availability, the cars were averaging >60k. Hopefully most people buying cars in that price range have incomes that make $7,500 in tax rebates possible.

By the time that the prices had dropped to 50k, the rebates where closer to $3,700. How many were sold at each range and what percentage of the rebate was accessible? Hard to say... thus the range of possible subsidies.

Either way, though, this was effectively a big help to the business.

It is now a hindrance as every other EV maker (except soon GM) gets the subsidy to compete against Tesla which no longer does.

Yeah, definitely... and it looks like Ford might actually enter the phaseout next, making it purely a subsidy for foreign automakers.

Keep in mind I said "Elon's companies", not "Tesla"

$4.9 Billion in subsidies as of 2015 across 3 companies

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-201...

We can talk about Gm if you want but I don't see how its relevant to my original point. Are there gas stations where only GM cars can fill up?

Again, that article is inferring that Solar and BEV (Alternative fuel and Energy Source) sales equates to Elon getting government money.

Everything that generates a receipt or purchase order when dealing with the U.S. government is a publicly available record and can be requested via the FOIA act (Just like the DEO grant).

Did you notice how none of that where presented in the article you linked?

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