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> How is that a profitable scam? Anybody else could buy the same car with the same subsidy. What's the subsidy level? Because people earning a few dollars a da

> How is that a profitable scam? Anybody else could buy the same car with the same subsidy. What's the subsidy level? Because people earning a few dollars a day aren't paying much more for your subsidised Tesla than they paid for their 30 year old car with an ICE. And if you start subsidising new EVs to the extent that your giving them away for less than $1k, your scheme might actually be worse for the environment (Production costs are a significant fraction of the carbon footprint of a car, especially if it isn't used very much, and directly or indirectly the subsidy makes brand new cars cheap for a lot of people in developed countries that don't need them...) The more you consider the logistics of such a scheme, the more carbon capture makes sense, and not because I'm averse to the idea of subsidies for EVs or solar manufacture

AnthonyMouse 5y ago
You don't have to subsidize against the alternative of a 10+ year old car from the US or Europe if you stop selling ICE cars in the US and Europe, because in ten years the ten year old cars will all be electric too. So the subsidy is only the amount required to make a new electric car cheaper than a new gasoline car, for the people breaking into the middle class who can now afford that. That's the same as it is in the US, isn't very much, and is declining as batteries get cheaper. It may be soon that it won't even be necessary.
- notahacker 5y ago
  Have you ever been to the developing world? Battered old cars are worth more than a year's average per capita income in much of the world. They're not throwing away recently manufactured US/European/Japanese cars before 2050 just because their country's 0.1% now find subsidised Teslas more financially attractive than Fords or Mercedes. Actually, they probably won't find subsidised Teslas more appealing than Fords or Mercedes if they drive long distances, because it's a lot easy to find a roadside shack with gasoline than EV hookups. There are already production EVs cheaper than any US manufactured car made in China, but it isn't going to make much of a dent in the residual demand for the billion ICE cars, trucks vans already in existence in places where people buy second hand and maintain forever.

AnthonyMouse 5y ago

You don't have to subsidize against the alternative of a 10+ year old car from the US or Europe if you stop selling ICE cars in the US and Europe, because in ten years the ten year old cars will all be electric too. So the subsidy is only the amount required to make a new electric car cheaper than a new gasoline car, for the people breaking into the middle class who can now afford that. That's the same as it is in the US, isn't very much, and is declining as batteries get cheaper. It may be soon that it won't even be necessary.

notahacker 5y ago
Have you ever been to the developing world? Battered old cars are worth more than a year's average per capita income in much of the world. They're not throwing away recently manufactured US/European/Japanese cars before 2050 just because their country's 0.1% now find subsidised Teslas more financially attractive than Fords or Mercedes. Actually, they probably won't find subsidised Teslas more appealing than Fords or Mercedes if they drive long distances, because it's a lot easy to find a roadside shack with gasoline than EV hookups. There are already production EVs cheaper than any US manufactured car made in China, but it isn't going to make much of a dent in the residual demand for the billion ICE cars, trucks vans already in existence in places where people buy second hand and maintain forever.