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Is California Bailing Out Tesla through the Backdoor?

wolfstreet.com

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Re: Is California Bailing Out Tesla through the Backdoor?

#41

Post by valuearb »

apexalpha wrote: post #34
valuearb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the benefits of the subsidy are disproportionately given to companies that exhaust federal subsidies. And Tesla will be the only one to do that for some time. EV's don't make good sense "economically" for California yet. It's not unreasonable to wait until battery costs come down so mass adoption comes naturally. They do make sense environmentally, but there is a far better way to compensate them for the actu…

>It's not unreasonable to wait until battery costs come down so mass adoption comes naturally. But how will battery costs come down if no one invests in it? You sound like the people in my country, forever waiting for the price of wind turbines to drop. The Danish, German and Dutch government handed out massive subsidies for the first wind parks. Now, because of those subsidies, subsequent wind turbine parks can be b…

How did light bulbs ever become cheap enough to use without anyone using them? It's called research and development. Throwing out subsidies for specific technologies helps those technologies develop faster, but doesn't necessarily help the best technologies succeed. President Grant might have funded better technologies for getting more whale oil.

Just putting in a cap and trade system makes carbon neutral power generation much more attractive. But it doesn't pick the winners, and maybe some technology you and I are skeptical of turns out to be far better than the others.

Re: Is California Bailing Out Tesla through the Backdoor?

#42

Post by valuearb »

curun1r wrote: post #33
valuearb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the benefits of the subsidy are disproportionately given to companies that exhaust federal subsidies. And Tesla will be the only one to do that for some time. EV's don't make good sense "economically" for California yet. It's not unreasonable to wait until battery costs come down so mass adoption comes naturally. They do make sense environmentally, but there is a far better way to compensate them for the actu…

I don't understand why there's a need for complex cap and trade schemes to deal with carbon emissions from vehicles when there is a perfectly simple way of adding a cost to driving a carbon-emitting vehicle. Just add more taxes to gas. Taxing the vehicles unfairly punishes people who drive gas vehicles but organize their life in such a way that they don't need to drive many miles. Who is more environmentally friendly…

Carbon taxes are imperfect solutions because you don't where to set the tax at. A good cap and trade market will find the right price, and even better, it should use the same price to compensate people for building carbon sinks, ie. planting trees, etc.

It's really unlikely we can get anywhere near the reductions we need simply by limiting carbon emissions, returning lots of carbon from the air into sinks likely can be far cheaper than stopping the last X% of emissions.

Re: Is California Bailing Out Tesla through the Backdoor?

#43

Post by valuearb »

cybernytrix wrote: post #17
valuearb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the benefits of the subsidy are disproportionately given to companies that exhaust federal subsidies. And Tesla will be the only one to do that for some time. EV's don't make good sense "economically" for California yet. It's not unreasonable to wait until battery costs come down so mass adoption comes naturally. They do make sense environmentally, but there is a far better way to compensate them for the actu…

What about the carbon emissions in order to manufacture the car, dig up mines for lithium etc? Surely that needs to be accounted as well.

That's what a well designed cap and trade system should do.

Re: Is California Bailing Out Tesla through the Backdoor?

#44

Post by valuearb »

dragonwriter wrote: post #27
valuearb wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the benefits of the subsidy are disproportionately given to companies that exhaust federal subsidies. And Tesla will be the only one to do that for some time. EV's don't make good sense "economically" for California yet. It's not unreasonable to wait until battery costs come down so mass adoption comes naturally. They do make sense environmentally, but there is a far better way to compensate them for the actu…

> EV's don't make good sense "economically" for California yet. Presumably, the scare quotes around “economically” are recognition that this argument is based on ignoring emissions-related externalities, management of which is almost the entire cited premise of the bill.

You are exactly right. I'm just saying that having a market set the price like cap and trade should do is far more efficient.

Re: Is California Bailing Out Tesla through the Backdoor?

#46

Post by dragonwriter »

valuearb wrote: post #41
apexalpha wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's not unreasonable to wait until battery costs come down so mass adoption comes naturally. But how will battery costs come down if no one invests in it? You sound like the people in my country, forever waiting for the price of wind turbines to drop. The Danish, German and Dutch government handed out massive subsidies for the first wind parks. Now, because of those subsidies, subsequent wind turbine parks can be b…

How did light bulbs ever become cheap enough to use without anyone using them? It's called research and development. Throwing out subsidies for specific technologies helps those technologies develop faster, but doesn't necessarily help the best technologies succeed. President Grant might have funded better technologies for getting more whale oil. Just putting in a cap and trade system makes carbon neutral power gener…

> How did light bulbs ever become cheap enough to use without anyone using them?

They didn't, which is why adoption was gradual.

Had there been a concern for a major global environmental catastrophe which more rapid adoption of electric lighting would help stave off, public subsidies to encourage adoption and accelerate development might have made sense.

Re: Is California Bailing Out Tesla through the Backdoor?

#47

Post by greenyoda »

dragonwriter wrote: post #38
dragonwriter wrote: post #19

The Business Insider piece sourced it's information on what the bill does not on the bill text, but on a combination of an advocacy email from an opposed legislator and reporting by the Mercury News. The rebate plan does not do at all what the article claims; specifically, for instance, it does not establish a new general rebate that is designed to match the difference between an electric vehicle's price and that of…

FYI, in case the reference to Business Insider in the above seems odd, the mods have apparently not only changed the headline to a more clickbait one than it used to be, but also ibexplicably changed the source article from a BI article to a nearly-identical (to the point that if they were turned in in a the same class in school, the putative authors would probably be hauled in to answer questions about plagiarism) W…

Is this the Business Insider article you're referring to?

http://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-stock-price-california-...

If so, it's written by Wolf Richter, the owner of the Wolf Street blog, and has a link to his "original article on Wolf Street" at the bottom. Not plagiarism.

HN Guidelines ask you to "submit the original source", so this is probably why the HN headline was changed.

Re: Is California Bailing Out Tesla through the Backdoor?

#48

Post by thewhitetulip »

iamryo wrote: post #40
thewhitetulip wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would any govt want to subsidize hybrids? isn't their goal to be all electric by 2050 something?

Probably nothing to do with decision makers being aggressively lobbied by major car-makers that would prefer to make the easier-to-sell hybrids than full-blown electric cars.

But this is the main problem right? The companies are not allowing other companies to grow, they have done so successfully since a few decades, if they had not lobbied so aggressively, we'd have practical electric cars long time ago. It was purely due to Tesla's brand that Electric cars are now alive. nothing else.
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