Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

- GM - $3.58 Billion in subsidies

- Ford - $2.52 Billion in subsidies

- Fiat Chrysler Automobiles — $2.06 Billion in subsidies

Took 10 seconds of Googling to find that.

Plus Tesla is actually innovating on a massive scale and pulling the world into a more sustainable, quieter future. I too hate subsidies but as long as the US Governemnt is going to keep up corporate welfare it may as well be towards the actual innovators building a better future than the laggards trying their best to maintain the status quo so they can extract maximum profits.

Nobody I know here bought a petrol car last two years; one got a plug-in hybrid. Tesla is hardly a status symbol here, it attracts customers both from the middle and luxury segments. People who in the past would consider Audi A5 or Volvo X70 would go for Tesla. The economics for electric cars are simply much better.

A quick search also indicates that your gas is 25% more expensive than France or Britain, and more importantly that your electric car incentives are so absurd that your politicians are beginning to roll them back. No taxes, no tolls, no ferry charges, no parking fees, free use of bus lanes. Electric cars there are cheaper than equivalent gas powered cars, because the taxes are ~50% of the cost. Yeah, with incentives like that, I'd probably own an electric car, too. I'm not sure this counts as an electric car revolution so much as a government handout, though. If the government subsidized 50% of the price of Fords, you'd probably see their sales skyrocket but no one would really call that a revolution.

Tesla is definitely a status symbol, though. The fact that Audi drivers moved to Tesla didn't dispute that because Audi is also a status symbol. Volvo to a lesser extent.

I'm not sure I did pick a poor metric. Income in the Bay Area is pretty uneven. You see a lot of Teslas at the Google campus, but relatively few at Wal-Mart. Salaries at tech companies are six figure but minimum wage is just above $10/hr.

> Parking is not free, although some municipalities subsidize rebates for EV spots in select garages. Urban dwellers (majority of EV market) nearly never take ferries. Incentives were clearly temporary from the beginning, you are hardly breaking any news to me here.

The article I read indicated that they were, but maybe not. Obviously the tax exemption is the big factor.

> The price of car is not subsidized, a Tesla here costs more dollar-to-dollar than it does in California before rebates.

That's not a realistic claim if the government is waving taxes that would otherwise amount to half the total cost of the car.

It's not very interesting to compare the absolute Tesla cost there and in California. What's interesting to compare is the Tesla cost there vs California relative to other options. A Tesla Model S in California costs about as much as a BMW M3. It looks like in Norway the effective cost of a Model S is closer to a basic Model 3.

> Sure there are (also temporary) import tax incentives, but it's about the only way a government can encourage adoption of clean tech in chicken and egg infrastructure situation. There has to be some upside for being the first guy in the town who can't fill at gas station. As soon as it gains momentum, the incentives will be rolled back. It is however already clear that EV adoption in Norway is a success.

I'm not opposed to tax incentives. My point is just that the "revolution" here is being driven by massive government subsidies. A 50% subsidy will make almost anything a success.

> Also you have to be really really broke to see an ordinary German sedan as a status symbol, certainly not anywhere in Western Europe.

I think this says something about your financial situation that you think the only way to see an Audi as a status symbol is if you're "really broke". I don't know about Norway, but most cars sold in Europe are not Audis or BMWs. Fiat outsells BMW and Audi. So does GM. So does Ford. And Peugot. And Renault. Volkwagon beats Audi and BMW combined. BMW and Audi are not "ordinary German sedans". They are luxury cars purchased by a minority of the population. They are absolutely status symbols.

http://www.acea.be/statistics/tag/category/by-manufacturer-r...

Government is like Thor's hammer. If you can wield it, you wield tremendous power.

Think of mega corps as Thor, wielding the hammer. This is how government works: A mega corp pays for politics to happen in a certain way, and thus change happens at huge scale through taxpayer money.

However, you may not wield the hammer if you are not Thor, because it's too heavy. Analogously, lobbying is too expensive for small players, and to be a politician advocating risky things without a huge payout is career suicide.

Advocating governmental change is a nice thought, but how government actually works is by having enough cash. Be a huge mega-corp and then paying lobbyists that pay people inside of government.

Or, you could simply grow a company and do your best to be completely independent of government while stile abiding by their rules and operating under fair laws. That's what Tesla is doing.