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Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

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Re: Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

#131
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The masses don't own houses to put these roofs on. Because of concentration of wealth and return on capital exacerbating that concentration. Because of rent seeking pyramid schemes. Which I imagine artificially restricts demand for improvements like solar panel roofs: who has more inventive to invest in things like solar panel roofs? Owner occupants who are in it for the long term, or rent seeking landlords just tryi…

Home ownership in the US is north of 64% currently.

Re: Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

#132
post #45
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

that can't be true as rich people are by definition a small minority. why not just give the subsidies directly to the companies

Why not just do unit tests instead of integration tests? Because you want to create a system that provides feedback on the entire end to end process. You subsidize purchases because The thing you want to incentivize is not making solar panels, but bringing solar panels all the way to market. You are trying to get the market off the ground, not just the technology.

Re: Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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?

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.

Re: Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

#134

> 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.

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.

Re: Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

#135
post #121
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean the right. This is exactly what is meant by trickle down economics. The left just likes to pretend that because money isn’t going directly in your pocket it’s all a scam, but that’s not the truth. Sorry.

Except that time and time again, it has been shown that it absolutely does not work. "[I]f the income share of the top 20 percent (the rich) increases, then GDP growth actually declines over the medium term, suggesting that the benefits do not trickle down. In contrast, an increase in the income share of the bottom 20 percent (the poor) is associated with higher GDP growth. [1]" [1] https://www.imf.org/en/Publication…

Except you don’t need that much GDP growth if the price of everything is going down, so that argument is flawed.

Re: Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just moved back to France after living 2 years in Phoenix. You can't rely on public transportation, I don't want to wait for a freaking bus to go get milk. I want density enough that there will be a shop I can walk to. public transportation, is good for important planed travel like going to work, but not for small stuff like going to the pharmacy or the gym or going from shop to shop to find the couch of your dream…

Where I live I can walk or bike to shops easy enough but getting across town is something else entirely.

Re: Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

#137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let rich people get the buggy version 1.0 stuff and help the technology mature for everyone! I'll wait a few years and get the debugged version 2.0 or 3.0 for 1/10th the price. Look at 4K TV sets, for example.

Out of the loop here, what were the big issues with early 4K TVs?

4K resolution, but only support for HDMI input at 30hz, or having to use some incredibly fiddly solutions where two cables had to be used at once. Internal image processing was too slow, so you would see 100ms delay which made them too slow for playing games. And then the quality of 4K panels was frequently far below good 1080p, but for more money.

Re: Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

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?

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. )

Re: Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

#139
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

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?

Re: Tesla’s new Solar Roof costs less than a new roof plus solar panels

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The masses don't own houses to put these roofs on. Because of concentration of wealth and return on capital exacerbating that concentration. Because of rent seeking pyramid schemes. Which I imagine artificially restricts demand for improvements like solar panel roofs: who has more inventive to invest in things like solar panel roofs? Owner occupants who are in it for the long term, or rent seeking landlords just tryi…

>The masses don't own houses to put these roofs on Is this based off an SV mindset? There are plenty of homeowners that aren't rich around the country. Plus less pollution in the air helps the masses too, with fewer health issues and less extreme weather on a long term basis.

I live in the Midwest.
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