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> It also lists $33,950 as the price after an $8,550 federal tax incentive. There is something absolutely astonishing about the fact that in America the way we

> It also lists $33,950 as the price after an $8,550 federal tax incentive. There is something absolutely astonishing about the fact that in America the way we have go about being eco-friendly is to give huge tax breaks to rich people to buy solar panels and electric vehicles. To think with all that money we could build better infrastructure and denser housing. Really boggles the mind.

pgl 7y ago
Really? Isn't that how all successful technology starts off - highly priced, effectively experimental, but then becoming more and more available to the general public as the price goes down and production increases?
- reitzensteinm 7y ago
  The trouble is that you're necessarily picking winners and losers in order to design the incentive scheme. It makes no sense to pay somebody $7500 to buy a new car to drive to work, but not to switch to cycling or telecommuting. In this case, it's not necessarily clear that this is a product that needs to happen. Grid scale solar is significantly cheaper due to the economies of scale. Were there a carbon tax, there'd be the same encouragement of environmental solutions while leaving the market some flexibility in achieving that goal. With that said - I'll take the politically feasible solution rather than nothing.
  - rory096 7y ago
    >Grid scale solar is significantly cheaper due to the economies of scale. Utility scale solar has met the same ardent opposition in land use decisionmaking fora as denser housing, including from 'environmental' organizations. Some examples from around here: https://fredericksburg.com/news/local/culpeper/culpeper-county-planners-deny-solar-project/article_c1f3bdca-a5a9-5afd-acae-7e0c1c288563.html https://fredericksburg.com/news/local/culpeper/culpeper-coun... http://lakegastongazette-observer.com/news/article_8f621d6e-f89a-11e8-a2ac-aba2c52fbcb3.html http://lakegastongazette-observer.com/news/article_8f621d6e-... https://richmond.com/news/local/central-virginia/powhatan/powhatan-today/solar-farm-withdraws-application-after-board-denies-appeal/article_5efbcfd8-459a-11e9-9f47-ab35e59dc6b4.html https://richmond.com/news/local/central-virginia/powhatan/po... https://starexponent.com/news/county-committee-backs--acre-cap-on-utility-scale-solar/article_5d482d9b-6881-514b-8f5b-340593551e10.html https://starexponent.com/news/county-committee-backs--acre-c... https://www.pecva.org/library/documents/Our-Mission/Energy/Energy-Conservation/Utility-Scale_Solar_Policy_Document_-_Working_Draft_-_July_2019_-_Piedmont_Environmental_Council.pdf https://www.pecva.org/library/documents/Our-Mission/Energy/E...
    - robocat 7y ago
      Summary of 5 links: 2 projects cancelled due to NIMBY, 1 project being appealed due to NIMBY, 1 project cancelled due to ecological concerns (unclear if just NIMBY), 1 irrelevant link. fredericksburg.com - application cancelled - "He, like other neighbors of the project and another larger one south of Stevensburg, have consistently expressed concerns about impact to their property values ... Orye said he didn’t think solar fit anywhere in Culpeper County, emphasizing its rich historic resources related to the Civil War and early American history." lakegastongazette-observer.com "Opponents of the project ... turned out in droves at last week’s community meeting", "Many residents expressed concerns about the project’s effects on the ecology and their view", "the commission’s reasons for the denial were fivefold. They said the proposed facility develops more than 500 acres, is removing more than 1,100 acres of agricultural property from production, is proposed to be located in a populated residential area, is located on real estate that is located on the Virginia Scenic Byway and that setbacks and buffers on the proposed project do not adequately address the need to visually block the project from the view of its neighbors" richmond.com - "a solar project that had significant community opposition", "plans to build a solar energy farm on 1090 acres of a 2998 acre property", "400 acres of the project would [become] a conservation easement" , "The planning commission determined that the proposed use is not in accord with recommendations made in the 2010 Long-Range Comprehensive Plan, in particular since part of the project would fall into the area designated Priority Conservation Area and Protected Land.", "Among the citizen comments that were made, most were in stringent opposition because of the negative ecological impact the project would have on protected wetlands in the area, the only remaining wildlife corridor connecting the James and Appomattox rivers, and on rare and endangered species." starexponent.com - "Culpeper County will consider placing a cap on 'utility scale solar sprawl' equal to the amount of the renewable energy its residents could actually consume.", "In October, the board approved the county’s first-ever solar farm on 1,000 acres near Stevensburg to the dismay of neighbors, who have since filed a civil suit in the matter asking the circuit court to reverse the approval." www.pecva.org - looks like last link just shows planning details and doesn't show opposition.
      - rory096 7y ago
        >www.pecva.org - looks like last link just shows planning details and doesn't show opposition. They oppose utility-scale solar anywhere except existing industrial land, in favor of the "low hanging fruit" of rooftop solar. >PEC is an advocate for solar energy, especially distributed solar power generation - small scale solar (usually rooftop) primarily designed to meet the immediate demands of the property in which it is located. In comparison, the size and nature of USS Facilities create challenges for any locality to protect important resources and the public health, safety, and welfare of the community. Virginia has thousands of acres of rooftops, parking lots, and landfills devoid of solar panels in areas of moderate to high energy demand, in addition to contaminated and/or underutilized industrial sites. It is PEC’s belief that we should be looking to these developed areas as the low hanging fruit of future solar sites. >Utility-Scale Solar (USS) Facilities are industrial facilities and should not be allowed by-right on agriculturally zoned lands. Given their size and nature, they should be: >● Subject to a Conditional or Special Use Permit in agriculturally zoned areas with maximum acreage allowed per project and possibly per the entire County; and/or >● Limited to existing industrial zoned areas. > ○ Agricultural land should not be spot zoned to create additional industrial zoned areas for USS Facilities.
  - metafunctor 7y ago
    That's exactly what regulation is and does. It picks winners, picks harmful phenomenon, and acts accordingly, with a short-to-medium timeframe based on what would get the most votes. I, too, believe that taxing actual atmospheric carbon impact would be great, but how would you measure such a thing fairly?
    - BlueTemplar 7y ago
      Go as much to the source of production as possible : forbidding unconventional fossil fuel extraction, heavily taxing fossil fuel imports long range plane landings, methane-producing livestock, &c.
    - specialist 7y ago
      Just like with other taxes: brackets, rebates, credits paired with subsidies and investment.
    - brashcal 7y ago
      >That's exactly what regulation is and does. It picks winners, picks harmful phenomenon, and acts accordingly, with a short-to-medium timeframe based on what would get the most votes. The subsidies are terrible. They are way too narrow and don’t address the root cause of the issue. Climate change is not happening because we don’t have enough renewables, climate change is happening because our GHG emissions are too high. Tax the emissions and all activities which generate emissions become less appealing, while all opportunities to reduce the emissions become more lucrative. The example of riding a bike instead of buying an EV fits into this as well. With a carbon tax, using a bike would be equally accounted for. By using subsidies, the government gets to pick the winner and doesn’t let people think. Renewables especially as they are now are a terrible way to tackle the problem. If we used taxes instead of subsidies, I’m afraid that not many renewable power plants would be built, because other alternatives are way more effective at curbing emissions. Solutions like rooftop solar – and by extension, these Tesla tiles - wouldn’t make a lot of financial sense if people were billed for their electricity appropriately based on costs. The cost of electricity distribution is primarily a fixed cost in the infrastructure and its upkeep. The variable cost of generating the electricity is small in comparison. People, however, are generally billed more in variable cost based on use of electricity rather than with a larger, fixed fee. It’s set up in this way because it makes sense; the poor can afford connecting themselves to the grid and keep the necessities powered, while reckless use of energy i.e. having AC on 24/7 is disincentivized by the cost. But once people start pushing rooftop solar on their grid and selling the energy back to the grid at the retail price, not the wholesale price, they are being massively subsidized in their electricity generation, as part of the fixed cost of operating the grid was baked into the variable cost of electricity prices. The pushback from utilities comes from exactly this perspective; if more and more people start net-metering their own bills lower with the rooftop solar, then it means that fewer and fewer people will be responsible for appropriately funding the grid. In an extreme scenario where everyone net-metered their bills down to zero, it would mean that nobody would be paying for the grid. Obviously, such a situation is unsustainable. And even though there’d be plenty of solar to go by in such a situation, the grid would still be a necessity, as is all the generation which functions as a back-up. And somehow, it would all still need to be paid for. But there’s more to it, too. Net-metering creates a reverse-incentive. Electricity prices in the wholesale market can even go negative if there is overgeneration, because overgeneration is harmful, and it needs to be dealt with. If net-metering practices are in place, and people start doing more and more rooftop solar to the point of more and more frequent overgeneration, the costs of operating the grid go up. Consequently, so would price of electricity. With a net-metering scheme still in place, everyone else is further incentivized to build solar panels on their roof and do the same to avoid paying the high prices. If the compensation for the electricity fed back into the grid was based on wholesale price instead, then, once average price (and value) of solar-generated electricity goes down, so do the incentives to build more solar panels. Adding insult to injury, the back-up issue is generally solved by using gas-fired power generation, as batteries cannot address the issue at this scale. Batteries are useful for bridging the gaps in between switching power generation sources, but the kind of quantity of capacity you’d need for a battery-only backup solution is not feasible. For back-up, gas is the primary back-up solution in California as well as in Australia, and the Russians are building a pipe to supply Germany. Ironically this makes solar generation - when the whole power generation solution is inspected at the grid-level - not all that green. And while this aspect of solar is ignored by subsidies, a carbon tax would still take it into account. The point being, subsidies can not only be ineffective, they can also be counterproductive in addition to ignoring all the alternatives. > I, too, believe that taxing actual atmospheric carbon impact would be great, but how would you measure such a thing fairly? You can measure emissions at sources and impose heavy fines on anyone who tries to circumvent them. The common problem in globalization, though, is defining and applying these standards universally and fairly. If you can’t trust the Germans to not fumble their numbers, what you’d think would happen in some other countries? Still, with a coordinated effort and systems to ensure transparency, it would be possible. Another method would be to subsidize more effective alternatives or for the government to build the more effective solutions by themselves. While this wouldn’t have the direction-changing impact of the carbon tax, it would be more straightforward to implement without the requirement of tracking pollution. Targets of subsidies could be selected by their impact on emissions per $ invested. Of course, the numbers could be fumbled here as well, but at least the calculations could be made public and be subject to scrutiny.
  - jplayer01 7y ago
    Man, if they gave me $7500 to ride a bike, I'd ride the fuck out of that bike. I'd buy like 5 and attach them to each other and take my friends with me everywhere.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jacquesm 7y ago
  Solar is a solved problem. Anything that wants to displace regular panels has to do so by improving on them.
nraynaud 7y ago
Americans on average do not want denser housing. It's not part of their culture, they don't see the point, they want a backyard, and they don't mind having to drive all the time. I'm pretty sure that even the people benefitting for the wealth cities produce would prefer not to live there, and I think the development of rich people's houses along the CT coast attest to that, they try to balance the wealth of the city and low density housing.
- annoyingnoob 7y ago
  I think you are right that a lot of Americans do not want dense housing. One thing we are missing, especially on the west coast, is good public transportation. Its not that I don't mind driving as much as that I don't have a choice. I'd love to take a train/subway to work or to the next town over or to the big city nearby - but those trains do not exist.
  - cma 7y ago
    Are there buses?
    - annoyingnoob 7y ago
      In town, yes. Between towns, maybe/sort of/infrequently. I can drive to work in 15 minutes. The bus takes over an hour including 30 minutes of walking. There are no bike lanes between home and work, its possible to bike it but really not safe - I'd guess the bike would take about 40 minutes.
      - cma 7y ago
        I'd imagine if a larger percentage of people took the bus, there could be much more frequent buses and dramatically less traffic on the roads making for faster busses.
    - oefrha 7y ago
      I used to live in Palo Alto. There’s VTA (bus) and Caltrain. Stops are few and far between so getting to and from the stops are in and of itself a problem. Buses tend to arrive every 15 minutes (or longer) I believe? Pretty infrequent. And outside peak hours there’s usually like one Caltrain an hour, so missing one really sucks. I had a colleague who had to travel frequently between Stanford and Berkeley (slightly unusual); it’s a sub-hour drive, but easily takes ~3 hours or more via public transit. P.S. At least the Valley is fairly bike-friendly by U.S. standard.
cpursley 7y ago
Denser human scale development is the real answer. Electric cars and rooftop solar is not going to solve the massive suburban sprawl crisis. You can thank the federal interstate system for that (effectively subsidizing land).
- abootstrapper 7y ago
  I agree we should put the breaks on urban sprawl, but the US is already spread out. I mean what’s more feasible: Have all current suburbanites sell their house, move downtown, and have their old property leveled OR get them driving an EV?
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    The first one, at least for the next decades. (We don't have enough resources for the second option - due to the required number of batteries. )
    - steelframe 7y ago
      We know we can't quickly replace all gas combustion engines on the road today with batteries because of material supply constraints alone. However if the goal is to reduce carbon emissions by vehicles by 90%, we can probably get there by replacing 95% of all gas-only vehicles with plug-in hybrids, which require a small fraction of the amount of battery material than fully electric cars require. I'm probably off with my estimates, but I believe they're in the ballpark.
      - BlueTemplar 7y ago
        Hmm, that's interesting - I thought that hybrids were less efficient, but maybe if they also require much less batteries they could be a great stepping stone ?
    - nostrademons 7y ago
      We don't have enough housing or mass transit for the first option, and building more batteries has proven significantly easier than building either more housing or more transit.
meerita 7y ago
Why people has to paid more just because they're rich?
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  Reframe that question: Why should poor people pay more because they’re not rich enough for the incentives? OP is not saying rich people should pay more; He’s saying get rid of the tax incentives. Yes, they end up paying more, but then poor people are paying the same as the rich.
  - bigwavedave 7y ago
    One of the problems is ambivalence. For many, PV is "nifty" but unnecessary- if I go to a fast food joint and I have a choice between a pretty good hamburger for 1/3 the price of a pretty good hamburger made from beef substitute, which do you think I'm gonna buy? But if I'm told that I can get the beef substitute version for just a few dollars more than the regular version because of a tax break, you can bet I'm far more willing to try it out. "Rich" (which is a relative term anyway) people are, by and large, the same. Get rid of the incentive and you'll get rid of the progress that comes with it. Saying "oh take away the incentive because not everyone pays the same amount" is a great way to get people to stop investing in it at all. It's not like poor people are going to say "oh wow, the rich people won't get a tax break for investing in this, now I'll definitely invest!" right? So poor people still won't be able to invest and now rich people will have less of a reason to overcome their ambivalence. Shockingly enough, taking away incentives will deincentivize people. Who knew?
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  Because if you want to live in a harmonious society that provides opportunity for everyone, it’s best to not create a huge wealth/income gap.
  - meerita 7y ago
    You cannot provide opportunities if you charge more to those who has more. You're just transfering money from one rich to another, unequally.
hokkos 7y ago
Incentiving rich people to buy expansive tech (and still at lost for the riches) help the technologies to ride the cost curve and bring it to the masses.
- buboard 7y ago
  that can't be true as rich people are by definition a small minority. why not just give the subsidies directly to the companies
  - rootsudo 7y ago
    I would also say that Rich people pave the way for adaption. For example, look at prices of flights. Before there was no "first class" everything was first class, now there are cabin options. While that example is a service, more proliferation of service == wider adaption == increased scale of economies == eventually prices come down for everyone.
    - buboard 7y ago
      That would be true if solar roofs were some novel technology that the rich would adopt first, and then the rest. This is a remix of existing technology, much like the iphone. The rich don't have roofs, they have domes or yachts. The poor don't own roofs. This is directed at the middle class squarely and only. To the extent that richer people adopt this, it's mostly for signaling reasons and not because it affords them some luxury they didn't have (like flights did). Your analogy is more appropriate for space tourism.
      - DFHippie 7y ago
        > it's mostly for signaling reasons This presumes rich people never have good motives and any appearance of morality or civic-mindedness they might show is a self-aggrandizing sham. This seems unlikely.
    - tibiapejagala 7y ago
      The trickle-down of the left.
shawnz 7y ago
Is $8000 huge? What kind of infrastructure do you expect to build with that?
- colejohnson66 7y ago
  You’re right. $8k is not a lot. But multiply that by the amount of people who received the incentive, and it adds up
  - cullenking 7y ago
    Probably only to a couple dozen large freeway exchanges....
paganel 7y ago
The same thing happens in Europe, most of the eco-related additional costs are actually regressive taxes that will mostly fall on the less better off. There are not that many media outlets openly discussing this, and the few people who actually do talk about it are painted as “wanting to destroy the planet” or worse.
- makomk 7y ago
  UK solar subsidies were particularly daft in this regard - because we're further north and have terrible weather, capacity factor is pretty awful compared to somewhere like California, plus solar is guaranteed to contribute a big fat zero to peak power demand (which is after sunset in winter). It basically just acted as a hand-out to wealthy home owners paid in part out of the power bills of the less well off. Somehow this didn't stop our nominally left-wing party attacking the government for ending it, though...
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    ...and yet it is particularly common in the UK for the home solar to be installed by a commercial provider (who don't get that subsidy, just feed-in tariffs), that provide the panels in exchange for the feed-in tariff from your roof. You get mostly free electric and sometimes some portion of feed-in tariff, they own the panels. If it was that pointless, this sort of deal could never add up, for either party.
    - makomk 7y ago
      Feed-in tariffs are a subsidy - they pay out more than the actual market value of the electricity, and that money comes from the bills paid by other consumers. This is especially true of the ones on older UK solar installations, which are higher than the retail cost of the electricity. There might be some justification for arguing that the ones in other places with much greater reliance on air conditioning and a summertime peak in usage aren't, because they could act as a form of peak shaving, but that doesn't apply to the UK. This didn't happen because the numbers added up. The government mandated it for political reasons and all parties had to go along.
Someone1234 7y ago
Indeed. The electric vehicle incentives are very much designed that way. The rich get more money than the poor. The higher your income, the more you get back. I'd have to earn an extra $30K to get the full $7,500 (and switch from high deductible to traditional healthcare/cancel my HSA), whereas someone wealthier buying the same car gets every cent.
- selectodude 7y ago
  Not quite. That $7500 is a full on tax credit. Not a deduction. So as long as you pay more than $7500 in taxes, you get it all back. And if for some reason you pay less, you’ll get a refund.
  - joshcain 7y ago
    No, he’s right. The EV credit is not refundable* so your tax liability has to be at least $7500 to get the full benefit of it. * https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/tax-credits-deductions/discussion/if-i-purchase-an-electric-vehicle-with-the-7500-tax-credit-how-do-i-ensure-that-i-will-owe-enough-at/00/772844 https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/tax-credits-deductions/dis...
    - selectodude 7y ago
      I didn't realize it wasn't refundable. However you don't need to make much to pay $7500 in taxes. I don't make enough to buy an electric car and I pay three times that.
      - Someone1234 7y ago
        > However you don't need to make much to pay $7500 in taxes. You do if you're a family, with a 24K standard deduction, a family HSA ($7K), and any number of 401Ks for retirement. A group of people who would benefit significantly from an electric vehicle. As I said, I don't qualify for the full amount and I earn well above the state's average.
- madengr 7y ago
rory096 7y ago
>To think with all that money we could build better infrastructure and denser housing. Denser housing isn't built because our local land use policymaking paradigms give the power to block it to the people who don't want it, not because of a lack of federal subsidies. If anything, the infrastructure built with that money would be road infrastructure to support further sprawl.
lazyjones 7y ago
This effectively multiplies the amount of money invested in climate-friendly technology and infrastructure by a factor of 5 with 80% coming from rich people, while generating jobs and more taxes. I find the classist outrage detrimental and disappointing.
deleted 7y ago
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notobvious 7y ago
Maybe it seems like this isn’t the best of all possible worlds, but are you sure there isn’t some rationalization that will let me continue to believe that better things really aren’t possible?
yspeak 7y ago
Subsidies always distort the marketplace and lead to unintended bad consequences. Elon has been able to keep Tesla going with extremely hard work, pushing his employees to edge of sanity, media showmanship, and exploiting subsidies to the max. Tesla will be in a rough spot when he leaves.
pjc50 7y ago
What are the alternatives to this for achieving the goal of CO2 output reduction, which will not be delivered by the market on its own? Initiatives that make carbon emissions more expensive are really unpopular. Direct government investment is "picking winners" or "socialism" (?).
derision 7y ago
It's not only rich people that get the incentive. $8550 is a lot for a middle class family that wants to upgrade their roof
jandrese 7y ago
And all we get out of it is less carbon in the atmosphere! Installing solar panels can pay off in the long run, but the big draw is to reduce your carbon footprint. Even if you are a rich asshole it's not a bad thing for you to be less polluting.
johnpowell 7y ago
You should have seen my last apartment. Single-pane windows that dripped, hot water heater from the early 80's, and pretty much zero insulation. It does seem like money that could be spent making dwellings more energy efficient. If you have a spare 40K does 8K really matter? They would probably buy it anyway.
nine_k 7y ago
Building denser housing is problematic not due to lack of money. Local non-monetary regulations mandate low-rises or single-family houses, huge parking lots, etc. If money could solve that, it may be by spending it on political campaigning, public education, or may be even bribing, to get the regulations out of the way.
cobookman 7y ago
Not just rich people. Anyone who pays taxes. Its just a tax write off. That's it. There's lots of other tax write offs. In California you can get solar installed for free if you are low income.
mcot2 7y ago
You don’t really have to be “rich” to afford this roof. It’s a totally sensible investment that actually pays for itself between 10-20 years and you can use a loan to finance it. It’s also very sensible for new home construction which is also traditionally financed via a mortgage.
- macspoofing 7y ago
  >It’s a totally sensible investment that actually pays for itself between 10-20 years You can't say that!!! That may be sort of true for traditional solar panels. There is scant data on whether a solar roof will ever be cost-effective. They are an unproven technology at this point. There are several differences between solar panels and solar roofs: 1) Solar roof is more expensive and less efficient. You're trading efficiency for something that looks nice. Is that something a government should subsidize? Rich people getting subsidies for aesthetic reasons? 2) Solar roof panels are not as durable as solar panels, are not as scalable, and the market for them is tiny - limited to people who want to get solar panels and a new roof. V1 and V2 versions of Tesla roof was a disaster. 3) Installation is much much harder and requires specialized professionals. Installing solar panels is already fraught with challenges (safety and otherwise), and all those need to do is collect sunshine. A solar roof also needs to take into account protection from the elements and therefore needs increased durability. Good writeup: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/5-reasons-to-not-get-too-excited-about-teslas-new-solar-roof https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/5-reasons-to-no...
ajross 7y ago
Total subsidies for this stuff are in the low $billions. Really it's not that much money overall (the EV market is still small, and the other stuff is all still noise), and wouldn't go far if spent for infrastructure. FWIW: newly built dense housing is actually cheaper than the more typical sprawl. In fact it's much cheaper if you factor in (heh) infrastructure savings due to the reduced road and utility lengths.
random314 7y ago
> To think with all that money we could build better infrastructure and denser housing How will an 8K subsidy per home help increase housing supply? Will that subsidy also automatically take care of global warming? 64% if Americans own a roof, FYI. What is truly detrimental to society is not the promotion of carbon neutrality, but this kind of crab mentality where some people benefiting more hurts more than the fact that this is a positive step for the planet as a whole.
11thEarlOfMar 7y ago
Those same incentives put a new Model 3 at $31,000 [0]. The entry level Toyota Camry is $24,000. You'll save $700-$1,200/year on 'energy' with the Tesla, save on oil changes and brakes and the Model 3 costs less to own than the Camry in maybe 7 years. Reduce pollution, avoid gas stations, have a lot more fun driving the safer Model 3. Electric cars are not just for the rich any more. [0] https://www.tesla.com/model3/design#battery https://www.tesla.com/model3/design#battery
- Marsymars 7y ago
  Depends a lot of locale. Where I live, in local dollars, an entry level Camry is is $24,295 (or $28,250 for a hybrid) while a Model 3 is $50,990 after incentives. Also not sure about a Model 3 being safer than a Camry, they weigh a similar amount and are both IIHS TSP+. (And a hybrid Camry weighs close to 1000 lb more than a Model 3.)
  - 11thEarlOfMar 7y ago
    Hybrid Camry is 3572 pounds maximum [1] Weight of Model 3 is 3627 minimum up to 4,072 (extended range, extra batteries, which are heavy.) [1] Model 3 has the lowest probability of injury in a crash of any car tested by NHTSA since 2011.[0] [0] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/14/tesla-model-3-vs-toyota-camry-honda-accord-nissan-altima/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/14/tesla-model-3-vs-toyota... [1] Google Camry weight; Model 3 weight
    - Marsymars 7y ago
      Oops, my mistake on the weight, was looking at gross vehicle weight line rather than curb weight. Thanks for the correction. Though the NHTSA thing you're citing is specifically what the NHTSA told Tesla they weren't allowed to claim.
jahewson 7y ago
> To think with all that money we could build better infrastructure and denser housing. Ha! This one made me laugh. In America nobody will let you build either of those things anymore. At least not where they are needed.
trimbo 7y ago
> with all that money we could build better infrastructure The amount of incentives spent by the US government for electric cars in the last 8 years is maybe $6bn. So that might buy a new span of the Bay Bridge.

pgl 7y ago

Really? Isn't that how all successful technology starts off - highly priced, effectively experimental, but then becoming more and more available to the general public as the price goes down and production increases?

reitzensteinm 7y ago
The trouble is that you're necessarily picking winners and losers in order to design the incentive scheme. It makes no sense to pay somebody $7500 to buy a new car to drive to work, but not to switch to cycling or telecommuting. In this case, it's not necessarily clear that this is a product that needs to happen. Grid scale solar is significantly cheaper due to the economies of scale. Were there a carbon tax, there'd be the same encouragement of environmental solutions while leaving the market some flexibility in achieving that goal. With that said - I'll take the politically feasible solution rather than nothing.
- rory096 7y ago
  >Grid scale solar is significantly cheaper due to the economies of scale. Utility scale solar has met the same ardent opposition in land use decisionmaking fora as denser housing, including from 'environmental' organizations. Some examples from around here: https://fredericksburg.com/news/local/culpeper/culpeper-county-planners-deny-solar-project/article_c1f3bdca-a5a9-5afd-acae-7e0c1c288563.html https://fredericksburg.com/news/local/culpeper/culpeper-coun... http://lakegastongazette-observer.com/news/article_8f621d6e-f89a-11e8-a2ac-aba2c52fbcb3.html http://lakegastongazette-observer.com/news/article_8f621d6e-... https://richmond.com/news/local/central-virginia/powhatan/powhatan-today/solar-farm-withdraws-application-after-board-denies-appeal/article_5efbcfd8-459a-11e9-9f47-ab35e59dc6b4.html https://richmond.com/news/local/central-virginia/powhatan/po... https://starexponent.com/news/county-committee-backs--acre-cap-on-utility-scale-solar/article_5d482d9b-6881-514b-8f5b-340593551e10.html https://starexponent.com/news/county-committee-backs--acre-c... https://www.pecva.org/library/documents/Our-Mission/Energy/Energy-Conservation/Utility-Scale_Solar_Policy_Document_-_Working_Draft_-_July_2019_-_Piedmont_Environmental_Council.pdf https://www.pecva.org/library/documents/Our-Mission/Energy/E...
  - robocat 7y ago
    Summary of 5 links: 2 projects cancelled due to NIMBY, 1 project being appealed due to NIMBY, 1 project cancelled due to ecological concerns (unclear if just NIMBY), 1 irrelevant link. fredericksburg.com - application cancelled - "He, like other neighbors of the project and another larger one south of Stevensburg, have consistently expressed concerns about impact to their property values ... Orye said he didn’t think solar fit anywhere in Culpeper County, emphasizing its rich historic resources related to the Civil War and early American history." lakegastongazette-observer.com "Opponents of the project ... turned out in droves at last week’s community meeting", "Many residents expressed concerns about the project’s effects on the ecology and their view", "the commission’s reasons for the denial were fivefold. They said the proposed facility develops more than 500 acres, is removing more than 1,100 acres of agricultural property from production, is proposed to be located in a populated residential area, is located on real estate that is located on the Virginia Scenic Byway and that setbacks and buffers on the proposed project do not adequately address the need to visually block the project from the view of its neighbors" richmond.com - "a solar project that had significant community opposition", "plans to build a solar energy farm on 1090 acres of a 2998 acre property", "400 acres of the project would [become] a conservation easement" , "The planning commission determined that the proposed use is not in accord with recommendations made in the 2010 Long-Range Comprehensive Plan, in particular since part of the project would fall into the area designated Priority Conservation Area and Protected Land.", "Among the citizen comments that were made, most were in stringent opposition because of the negative ecological impact the project would have on protected wetlands in the area, the only remaining wildlife corridor connecting the James and Appomattox rivers, and on rare and endangered species." starexponent.com - "Culpeper County will consider placing a cap on 'utility scale solar sprawl' equal to the amount of the renewable energy its residents could actually consume.", "In October, the board approved the county’s first-ever solar farm on 1,000 acres near Stevensburg to the dismay of neighbors, who have since filed a civil suit in the matter asking the circuit court to reverse the approval." www.pecva.org - looks like last link just shows planning details and doesn't show opposition.
    - rory096 7y ago
      >www.pecva.org - looks like last link just shows planning details and doesn't show opposition. They oppose utility-scale solar anywhere except existing industrial land, in favor of the "low hanging fruit" of rooftop solar. >PEC is an advocate for solar energy, especially distributed solar power generation - small scale solar (usually rooftop) primarily designed to meet the immediate demands of the property in which it is located. In comparison, the size and nature of USS Facilities create challenges for any locality to protect important resources and the public health, safety, and welfare of the community. Virginia has thousands of acres of rooftops, parking lots, and landfills devoid of solar panels in areas of moderate to high energy demand, in addition to contaminated and/or underutilized industrial sites. It is PEC’s belief that we should be looking to these developed areas as the low hanging fruit of future solar sites. >Utility-Scale Solar (USS) Facilities are industrial facilities and should not be allowed by-right on agriculturally zoned lands. Given their size and nature, they should be: >● Subject to a Conditional or Special Use Permit in agriculturally zoned areas with maximum acreage allowed per project and possibly per the entire County; and/or >● Limited to existing industrial zoned areas. > ○ Agricultural land should not be spot zoned to create additional industrial zoned areas for USS Facilities.
- metafunctor 7y ago
  That's exactly what regulation is and does. It picks winners, picks harmful phenomenon, and acts accordingly, with a short-to-medium timeframe based on what would get the most votes. I, too, believe that taxing actual atmospheric carbon impact would be great, but how would you measure such a thing fairly?
  - BlueTemplar 7y ago
    Go as much to the source of production as possible : forbidding unconventional fossil fuel extraction, heavily taxing fossil fuel imports long range plane landings, methane-producing livestock, &c.
  - specialist 7y ago
    Just like with other taxes: brackets, rebates, credits paired with subsidies and investment.
  - brashcal 7y ago
    >That's exactly what regulation is and does. It picks winners, picks harmful phenomenon, and acts accordingly, with a short-to-medium timeframe based on what would get the most votes. The subsidies are terrible. They are way too narrow and don’t address the root cause of the issue. Climate change is not happening because we don’t have enough renewables, climate change is happening because our GHG emissions are too high. Tax the emissions and all activities which generate emissions become less appealing, while all opportunities to reduce the emissions become more lucrative. The example of riding a bike instead of buying an EV fits into this as well. With a carbon tax, using a bike would be equally accounted for. By using subsidies, the government gets to pick the winner and doesn’t let people think. Renewables especially as they are now are a terrible way to tackle the problem. If we used taxes instead of subsidies, I’m afraid that not many renewable power plants would be built, because other alternatives are way more effective at curbing emissions. Solutions like rooftop solar – and by extension, these Tesla tiles - wouldn’t make a lot of financial sense if people were billed for their electricity appropriately based on costs. The cost of electricity distribution is primarily a fixed cost in the infrastructure and its upkeep. The variable cost of generating the electricity is small in comparison. People, however, are generally billed more in variable cost based on use of electricity rather than with a larger, fixed fee. It’s set up in this way because it makes sense; the poor can afford connecting themselves to the grid and keep the necessities powered, while reckless use of energy i.e. having AC on 24/7 is disincentivized by the cost. But once people start pushing rooftop solar on their grid and selling the energy back to the grid at the retail price, not the wholesale price, they are being massively subsidized in their electricity generation, as part of the fixed cost of operating the grid was baked into the variable cost of electricity prices. The pushback from utilities comes from exactly this perspective; if more and more people start net-metering their own bills lower with the rooftop solar, then it means that fewer and fewer people will be responsible for appropriately funding the grid. In an extreme scenario where everyone net-metered their bills down to zero, it would mean that nobody would be paying for the grid. Obviously, such a situation is unsustainable. And even though there’d be plenty of solar to go by in such a situation, the grid would still be a necessity, as is all the generation which functions as a back-up. And somehow, it would all still need to be paid for. But there’s more to it, too. Net-metering creates a reverse-incentive. Electricity prices in the wholesale market can even go negative if there is overgeneration, because overgeneration is harmful, and it needs to be dealt with. If net-metering practices are in place, and people start doing more and more rooftop solar to the point of more and more frequent overgeneration, the costs of operating the grid go up. Consequently, so would price of electricity. With a net-metering scheme still in place, everyone else is further incentivized to build solar panels on their roof and do the same to avoid paying the high prices. If the compensation for the electricity fed back into the grid was based on wholesale price instead, then, once average price (and value) of solar-generated electricity goes down, so do the incentives to build more solar panels. Adding insult to injury, the back-up issue is generally solved by using gas-fired power generation, as batteries cannot address the issue at this scale. Batteries are useful for bridging the gaps in between switching power generation sources, but the kind of quantity of capacity you’d need for a battery-only backup solution is not feasible. For back-up, gas is the primary back-up solution in California as well as in Australia, and the Russians are building a pipe to supply Germany. Ironically this makes solar generation - when the whole power generation solution is inspected at the grid-level - not all that green. And while this aspect of solar is ignored by subsidies, a carbon tax would still take it into account. The point being, subsidies can not only be ineffective, they can also be counterproductive in addition to ignoring all the alternatives. > I, too, believe that taxing actual atmospheric carbon impact would be great, but how would you measure such a thing fairly? You can measure emissions at sources and impose heavy fines on anyone who tries to circumvent them. The common problem in globalization, though, is defining and applying these standards universally and fairly. If you can’t trust the Germans to not fumble their numbers, what you’d think would happen in some other countries? Still, with a coordinated effort and systems to ensure transparency, it would be possible. Another method would be to subsidize more effective alternatives or for the government to build the more effective solutions by themselves. While this wouldn’t have the direction-changing impact of the carbon tax, it would be more straightforward to implement without the requirement of tracking pollution. Targets of subsidies could be selected by their impact on emissions per $ invested. Of course, the numbers could be fumbled here as well, but at least the calculations could be made public and be subject to scrutiny.
- jplayer01 7y ago
  Man, if they gave me $7500 to ride a bike, I'd ride the fuck out of that bike. I'd buy like 5 and attach them to each other and take my friends with me everywhere.
deleted 7y ago
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jacquesm 7y ago
Solar is a solved problem. Anything that wants to displace regular panels has to do so by improving on them.

nraynaud 7y ago

Americans on average do not want denser housing. It's not part of their culture, they don't see the point, they want a backyard, and they don't mind having to drive all the time. I'm pretty sure that even the people benefitting for the wealth cities produce would prefer not to live there, and I think the development of rich people's houses along the CT coast attest to that, they try to balance the wealth of the city and low density housing.

annoyingnoob 7y ago
I think you are right that a lot of Americans do not want dense housing. One thing we are missing, especially on the west coast, is good public transportation. Its not that I don't mind driving as much as that I don't have a choice. I'd love to take a train/subway to work or to the next town over or to the big city nearby - but those trains do not exist.
- cma 7y ago
  Are there buses?
  - annoyingnoob 7y ago
    In town, yes. Between towns, maybe/sort of/infrequently. I can drive to work in 15 minutes. The bus takes over an hour including 30 minutes of walking. There are no bike lanes between home and work, its possible to bike it but really not safe - I'd guess the bike would take about 40 minutes.
    - cma 7y ago
      I'd imagine if a larger percentage of people took the bus, there could be much more frequent buses and dramatically less traffic on the roads making for faster busses.
  - oefrha 7y ago
    I used to live in Palo Alto. There’s VTA (bus) and Caltrain. Stops are few and far between so getting to and from the stops are in and of itself a problem. Buses tend to arrive every 15 minutes (or longer) I believe? Pretty infrequent. And outside peak hours there’s usually like one Caltrain an hour, so missing one really sucks. I had a colleague who had to travel frequently between Stanford and Berkeley (slightly unusual); it’s a sub-hour drive, but easily takes ~3 hours or more via public transit. P.S. At least the Valley is fairly bike-friendly by U.S. standard.

cpursley 7y ago

Denser human scale development is the real answer. Electric cars and rooftop solar is not going to solve the massive suburban sprawl crisis. You can thank the federal interstate system for that (effectively subsidizing land).

abootstrapper 7y ago
I agree we should put the breaks on urban sprawl, but the US is already spread out. I mean what’s more feasible: Have all current suburbanites sell their house, move downtown, and have their old property leveled OR get them driving an EV?
- BlueTemplar 7y ago
  The first one, at least for the next decades. (We don't have enough resources for the second option - due to the required number of batteries. )
  - steelframe 7y ago
    We know we can't quickly replace all gas combustion engines on the road today with batteries because of material supply constraints alone. However if the goal is to reduce carbon emissions by vehicles by 90%, we can probably get there by replacing 95% of all gas-only vehicles with plug-in hybrids, which require a small fraction of the amount of battery material than fully electric cars require. I'm probably off with my estimates, but I believe they're in the ballpark.
    - BlueTemplar 7y ago
      Hmm, that's interesting - I thought that hybrids were less efficient, but maybe if they also require much less batteries they could be a great stepping stone ?
  - nostrademons 7y ago
    We don't have enough housing or mass transit for the first option, and building more batteries has proven significantly easier than building either more housing or more transit.

meerita 7y ago

Why people has to paid more just because they're rich?

colejohnson66 7y ago
Reframe that question: Why should poor people pay more because they’re not rich enough for the incentives? OP is not saying rich people should pay more; He’s saying get rid of the tax incentives. Yes, they end up paying more, but then poor people are paying the same as the rich.
- bigwavedave 7y ago
  One of the problems is ambivalence. For many, PV is "nifty" but unnecessary- if I go to a fast food joint and I have a choice between a pretty good hamburger for 1/3 the price of a pretty good hamburger made from beef substitute, which do you think I'm gonna buy? But if I'm told that I can get the beef substitute version for just a few dollars more than the regular version because of a tax break, you can bet I'm far more willing to try it out. "Rich" (which is a relative term anyway) people are, by and large, the same. Get rid of the incentive and you'll get rid of the progress that comes with it. Saying "oh take away the incentive because not everyone pays the same amount" is a great way to get people to stop investing in it at all. It's not like poor people are going to say "oh wow, the rich people won't get a tax break for investing in this, now I'll definitely invest!" right? So poor people still won't be able to invest and now rich people will have less of a reason to overcome their ambivalence. Shockingly enough, taking away incentives will deincentivize people. Who knew?
lotsofpulp 7y ago
Because if you want to live in a harmonious society that provides opportunity for everyone, it’s best to not create a huge wealth/income gap.
- meerita 7y ago
  You cannot provide opportunities if you charge more to those who has more. You're just transfering money from one rich to another, unequally.

hokkos 7y ago

Incentiving rich people to buy expansive tech (and still at lost for the riches) help the technologies to ride the cost curve and bring it to the masses.

buboard 7y ago
that can't be true as rich people are by definition a small minority. why not just give the subsidies directly to the companies
- rootsudo 7y ago
  I would also say that Rich people pave the way for adaption. For example, look at prices of flights. Before there was no "first class" everything was first class, now there are cabin options. While that example is a service, more proliferation of service == wider adaption == increased scale of economies == eventually prices come down for everyone.
  - buboard 7y ago
    That would be true if solar roofs were some novel technology that the rich would adopt first, and then the rest. This is a remix of existing technology, much like the iphone. The rich don't have roofs, they have domes or yachts. The poor don't own roofs. This is directed at the middle class squarely and only. To the extent that richer people adopt this, it's mostly for signaling reasons and not because it affords them some luxury they didn't have (like flights did). Your analogy is more appropriate for space tourism.
    - DFHippie 7y ago
      > it's mostly for signaling reasons This presumes rich people never have good motives and any appearance of morality or civic-mindedness they might show is a self-aggrandizing sham. This seems unlikely.
  - tibiapejagala 7y ago
    The trickle-down of the left.

shawnz 7y ago

Is $8000 huge? What kind of infrastructure do you expect to build with that?

colejohnson66 7y ago
You’re right. $8k is not a lot. But multiply that by the amount of people who received the incentive, and it adds up
- cullenking 7y ago
  Probably only to a couple dozen large freeway exchanges....

paganel 7y ago

The same thing happens in Europe, most of the eco-related additional costs are actually regressive taxes that will mostly fall on the less better off. There are not that many media outlets openly discussing this, and the few people who actually do talk about it are painted as “wanting to destroy the planet” or worse.

makomk 7y ago
UK solar subsidies were particularly daft in this regard - because we're further north and have terrible weather, capacity factor is pretty awful compared to somewhere like California, plus solar is guaranteed to contribute a big fat zero to peak power demand (which is after sunset in winter). It basically just acted as a hand-out to wealthy home owners paid in part out of the power bills of the less well off. Somehow this didn't stop our nominally left-wing party attacking the government for ending it, though...
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  ...and yet it is particularly common in the UK for the home solar to be installed by a commercial provider (who don't get that subsidy, just feed-in tariffs), that provide the panels in exchange for the feed-in tariff from your roof. You get mostly free electric and sometimes some portion of feed-in tariff, they own the panels. If it was that pointless, this sort of deal could never add up, for either party.
  - makomk 7y ago
    Feed-in tariffs are a subsidy - they pay out more than the actual market value of the electricity, and that money comes from the bills paid by other consumers. This is especially true of the ones on older UK solar installations, which are higher than the retail cost of the electricity. There might be some justification for arguing that the ones in other places with much greater reliance on air conditioning and a summertime peak in usage aren't, because they could act as a form of peak shaving, but that doesn't apply to the UK. This didn't happen because the numbers added up. The government mandated it for political reasons and all parties had to go along.

Someone1234 7y ago

Indeed. The electric vehicle incentives are very much designed that way. The rich get more money than the poor. The higher your income, the more you get back. I'd have to earn an extra $30K to get the full $7,500 (and switch from high deductible to traditional healthcare/cancel my HSA), whereas someone wealthier buying the same car gets every cent.

selectodude 7y ago
Not quite. That $7500 is a full on tax credit. Not a deduction. So as long as you pay more than $7500 in taxes, you get it all back. And if for some reason you pay less, you’ll get a refund.
- joshcain 7y ago
  No, he’s right. The EV credit is not refundable* so your tax liability has to be at least $7500 to get the full benefit of it. * https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/tax-credits-deductions/discussion/if-i-purchase-an-electric-vehicle-with-the-7500-tax-credit-how-do-i-ensure-that-i-will-owe-enough-at/00/772844 https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/tax-credits-deductions/dis...
  - selectodude 7y ago
    I didn't realize it wasn't refundable. However you don't need to make much to pay $7500 in taxes. I don't make enough to buy an electric car and I pay three times that.
    - Someone1234 7y ago
      > However you don't need to make much to pay $7500 in taxes. You do if you're a family, with a 24K standard deduction, a family HSA ($7K), and any number of 401Ks for retirement. A group of people who would benefit significantly from an electric vehicle. As I said, I don't qualify for the full amount and I earn well above the state's average.
madengr 7y ago

rory096 7y ago

>To think with all that money we could build better infrastructure and denser housing. Denser housing isn't built because our local land use policymaking paradigms give the power to block it to the people who don't want it, not because of a lack of federal subsidies. If anything, the infrastructure built with that money would be road infrastructure to support further sprawl.

lazyjones 7y ago

This effectively multiplies the amount of money invested in climate-friendly technology and infrastructure by a factor of 5 with 80% coming from rich people, while generating jobs and more taxes. I find the classist outrage detrimental and disappointing.

deleted 7y ago

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notobvious 7y ago

Maybe it seems like this isn’t the best of all possible worlds, but are you sure there isn’t some rationalization that will let me continue to believe that better things really aren’t possible?

yspeak 7y ago

Subsidies always distort the marketplace and lead to unintended bad consequences. Elon has been able to keep Tesla going with extremely hard work, pushing his employees to edge of sanity, media showmanship, and exploiting subsidies to the max. Tesla will be in a rough spot when he leaves.

pjc50 7y ago

What are the alternatives to this for achieving the goal of CO2 output reduction, which will not be delivered by the market on its own? Initiatives that make carbon emissions more expensive are really unpopular. Direct government investment is "picking winners" or "socialism" (?).

derision 7y ago

It's not only rich people that get the incentive. $8550 is a lot for a middle class family that wants to upgrade their roof

jandrese 7y ago

And all we get out of it is less carbon in the atmosphere! Installing solar panels can pay off in the long run, but the big draw is to reduce your carbon footprint. Even if you are a rich asshole it's not a bad thing for you to be less polluting.

johnpowell 7y ago

You should have seen my last apartment. Single-pane windows that dripped, hot water heater from the early 80's, and pretty much zero insulation. It does seem like money that could be spent making dwellings more energy efficient. If you have a spare 40K does 8K really matter? They would probably buy it anyway.

nine_k 7y ago

Building denser housing is problematic not due to lack of money. Local non-monetary regulations mandate low-rises or single-family houses, huge parking lots, etc. If money could solve that, it may be by spending it on political campaigning, public education, or may be even bribing, to get the regulations out of the way.

cobookman 7y ago

Not just rich people. Anyone who pays taxes. Its just a tax write off. That's it. There's lots of other tax write offs. In California you can get solar installed for free if you are low income.

mcot2 7y ago

You don’t really have to be “rich” to afford this roof. It’s a totally sensible investment that actually pays for itself between 10-20 years and you can use a loan to finance it. It’s also very sensible for new home construction which is also traditionally financed via a mortgage.

macspoofing 7y ago
>It’s a totally sensible investment that actually pays for itself between 10-20 years You can't say that!!! That may be sort of true for traditional solar panels. There is scant data on whether a solar roof will ever be cost-effective. They are an unproven technology at this point. There are several differences between solar panels and solar roofs: 1) Solar roof is more expensive and less efficient. You're trading efficiency for something that looks nice. Is that something a government should subsidize? Rich people getting subsidies for aesthetic reasons? 2) Solar roof panels are not as durable as solar panels, are not as scalable, and the market for them is tiny - limited to people who want to get solar panels and a new roof. V1 and V2 versions of Tesla roof was a disaster. 3) Installation is much much harder and requires specialized professionals. Installing solar panels is already fraught with challenges (safety and otherwise), and all those need to do is collect sunshine. A solar roof also needs to take into account protection from the elements and therefore needs increased durability. Good writeup: https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/5-reasons-to-not-get-too-excited-about-teslas-new-solar-roof https://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/5-reasons-to-no...

ajross 7y ago

Total subsidies for this stuff are in the low $billions. Really it's not that much money overall (the EV market is still small, and the other stuff is all still noise), and wouldn't go far if spent for infrastructure. FWIW: newly built dense housing is actually cheaper than the more typical sprawl. In fact it's much cheaper if you factor in (heh) infrastructure savings due to the reduced road and utility lengths.

random314 7y ago

> To think with all that money we could build better infrastructure and denser housing How will an 8K subsidy per home help increase housing supply? Will that subsidy also automatically take care of global warming? 64% if Americans own a roof, FYI. What is truly detrimental to society is not the promotion of carbon neutrality, but this kind of crab mentality where some people benefiting more hurts more than the fact that this is a positive step for the planet as a whole.

11thEarlOfMar 7y ago

Those same incentives put a new Model 3 at $31,000 [0]. The entry level Toyota Camry is $24,000. You'll save $700-$1,200/year on 'energy' with the Tesla, save on oil changes and brakes and the Model 3 costs less to own than the Camry in maybe 7 years. Reduce pollution, avoid gas stations, have a lot more fun driving the safer Model 3. Electric cars are not just for the rich any more. [0] https://www.tesla.com/model3/design#battery https://www.tesla.com/model3/design#battery

Marsymars 7y ago
Depends a lot of locale. Where I live, in local dollars, an entry level Camry is is $24,295 (or $28,250 for a hybrid) while a Model 3 is $50,990 after incentives. Also not sure about a Model 3 being safer than a Camry, they weigh a similar amount and are both IIHS TSP+. (And a hybrid Camry weighs close to 1000 lb more than a Model 3.)
- 11thEarlOfMar 7y ago
  Hybrid Camry is 3572 pounds maximum [1] Weight of Model 3 is 3627 minimum up to 4,072 (extended range, extra batteries, which are heavy.) [1] Model 3 has the lowest probability of injury in a crash of any car tested by NHTSA since 2011.[0] [0] https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/14/tesla-model-3-vs-toyota-camry-honda-accord-nissan-altima/ https://cleantechnica.com/2019/03/14/tesla-model-3-vs-toyota... [1] Google Camry weight; Model 3 weight
  - Marsymars 7y ago
    Oops, my mistake on the weight, was looking at gross vehicle weight line rather than curb weight. Thanks for the correction. Though the NHTSA thing you're citing is specifically what the NHTSA told Tesla they weren't allowed to claim.

jahewson 7y ago

> To think with all that money we could build better infrastructure and denser housing. Ha! This one made me laugh. In America nobody will let you build either of those things anymore. At least not where they are needed.

trimbo 7y ago

> with all that money we could build better infrastructure The amount of incentives spent by the US government for electric cars in the last 8 years is maybe $6bn. So that might buy a new span of the Bay Bridge.