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If Tesla’s not competitive, then it’s not competitive. I’m glad to see the government involvement being reduced. Let the free market handle things.

• deepnotderp 10y ago
  And yet subsidies for fossil fuels continue...
• rch 10y ago
  It's much easier to make a buck if you're not held accountable for negative externalities.
• toomuchtodo 10y ago
  If you're not paying for the carbon externalities, the free market has failed.
• codingdave 10y ago
  Letting the free market handle things works, IF your only goal is economic. And while that is important, there are bigger pictures to worry about. Like, preserving a habitable planet.
  • merc285 10y ago
    yes because we can undo china and india's record breaking smog and pollution. /s
    • flukus 10y ago
      Assuming manufacturing got moved back to America then yes, it can be solved.
      • codingdave 10y ago
        Even if not, giving up on doing the right thing just because other countries aren't helping is a very short-sighted approach to worldwide leadership. We can lead the efforts towards a better world.
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• cossatot 10y ago
  It's probably cheaper for government and taxpayers in the long run to for the govermnent to aid in the development of markets for alternative energy that can reduce the negative externalities of pollution, the international control of conventional fuel sources, and ease the transition from finite nonrenewables as supply diminishes, than to sit it out completely and deal with the aftermath. Not many private investors invest on the >50 year timescales that energy transitions require.
  • Spivak 10y ago
    Serous question, why not just fund/subsidize the research and development until it's actually competitive? Then when it's ready to bring to market give them a huge investment for the infrastructure to combat the high barrier to entry in return for something we want as a society, like say, a cap on battery costs or an open charging protocol. Are electric cars, as they currently stand, really so environmentally friendly that it's worth the taxpayers $5-15k/car plus the infrastructure subsidies to get someone off gasoline? If that's the case then I'll happily pay it but then damn -- we should just pay people $2k/year to just not own a car.
    • ScottBurson 10y ago
      > why not just fund/subsidize the research and development until it's actually competitive? Because R&D isn't all that's needed. It takes time to grow an industry. It's one thing to project future economies of scale, quite another to demonstrate that those economies are already being realized. IIRC, battery prices are on track to fall by another 50% by 2023 or so. That will be a game-changer, and there's no way it could have happened through R&D alone.
    • cossatot 10y ago
      Electricity isn't a primary energy source. Electric cars are only as environmentally friendly as the power generation plants that make it. If you're in Seattle, your Tesla is pretty low-CO2 because it runs on hydropower. If you're in the northeast, your Tesla runs on coal, and if you're in CA, it runs on natural gas. But the combustion doesn't happen in the middle of the cities, and is centralized, so some aspects of the pollution can be controlled a little more, there's less smog, etc. Renewable power plants/companies receive both tax incentives and R&D subsidies from state and federal government, and there is research being done directly by the DOE at national labs, as well as at universities etc. from DOE grants. There are also private companies that get DOE research grants for a range of pure through applied research. It's unlikely that grid-scale renewables could be developed in a wholly R&D environment then deployed at once. And then what would the government do? License or auction technology that hasn't been field tested at scale? Utilities, local governments and private companies would still probably need intermediaries to set things up. So it makes sense to provide some direct funding and some tax incentives to allow companies to do their own R&D, collaborate with government researchers, and work with utilities to bring systems online. Market disruption due to sudden, untested new entrants is less appealing with utility power than with phones--it makes sense to work for a gradual transition. As far as consumer-scale power generation (rooftop solar or whatever), I think what you've suggested is pretty much what's happening, but I don't follow it. (I'm not a homeowner but have done DOE funded geothermal research with a private R&D company, Altarock LLC.) edit: Electric cars are also abstracted from the type of power plant that produces the energy, unlike internal combusion cars, so having more of them is more amenable to a somewhat rapidly evolving power generation landscape.
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• gusgordon 10y ago
  You clearly don't have a basic understanding of the issues here. Cars that use gas incur the additional penalty of environmental damage that is unaccounted for in the value of those vehicles relative to their cost. For example, a gas car may cost $1000, and bring $1500 of value to the owner, but incur $200 of damage to the environment. This is not priced into the value of the car. If you want to learn more you can read the first few chapters of an introductory economics textbook where they cover market failure.