3 ms·

A lot of people get their opinions from a chain of misinformation that starts from groups who are incentivized to keep the status quo. Even so, there are a lot

A lot of people get their opinions from a chain of misinformation that starts from groups who are incentivized to keep the status quo. Even so, there are a lot more high leverage ways to spend tax money on reducing carbon than car rebates. Car rebates are a way to buy votes. I think it's pretty obvious that $7500 could be spent in way that reduces much more CO2 and doesn't benefit people that are already pretty well off.

kevstev 5y ago
The rebates are more directly intended to spur an EV auto industry, preferably dominated globally by US auto makers though? And I think you could argue that they did a pretty good job of this- at the very least they seem to have fast forwarded EV market share by 5-10 years, allowing at least Tesla to bootstrap itself and spurring the big auto makers into the EV game in a real way. The way things were going until 2005ish, GM would create a lot of headlines by putting a battery into some golf cart that could barely handle a trip to the mall and back and then put up its hands and say "See this just isn't practical and this is the best our MIT engineers can do vaguely waves at its ICE car lineup" And through that lens, when it certainly felt that EVs were really going nowhere aside from a few prototypes that were completely uncompetitive, or a niche for really rich people, these subsidies have essentially launched a legit EV industry that can stand on its own, and the amount of carbon reduction that will lead to seems astoundingly cheap for the price paid. I guess you can always second guess what would have happened in the absence of these incentives, but to me they seem to have legitimately pushed forward the EV market quite a bit. Without these incentives and Tesla, I personally feel that the big automakers would have continued to pay lip service for another decade or two, maybe even three, until peripheral advances in battery technology made EVs too competitive to ignore.

kevstev 5y ago

The rebates are more directly intended to spur an EV auto industry, preferably dominated globally by US auto makers though? And I think you could argue that they did a pretty good job of this- at the very least they seem to have fast forwarded EV market share by 5-10 years, allowing at least Tesla to bootstrap itself and spurring the big auto makers into the EV game in a real way. The way things were going until 2005ish, GM would create a lot of headlines by putting a battery into some golf cart that could barely handle a trip to the mall and back and then put up its hands and say "See this just isn't practical and this is the best our MIT engineers can do vaguely waves at its ICE car lineup" And through that lens, when it certainly felt that EVs were really going nowhere aside from a few prototypes that were completely uncompetitive, or a niche for really rich people, these subsidies have essentially launched a legit EV industry that can stand on its own, and the amount of carbon reduction that will lead to seems astoundingly cheap for the price paid. I guess you can always second guess what would have happened in the absence of these incentives, but to me they seem to have legitimately pushed forward the EV market quite a bit. Without these incentives and Tesla, I personally feel that the big automakers would have continued to pay lip service for another decade or two, maybe even three, until peripheral advances in battery technology made EVs too competitive to ignore.