Tesla reports another huge quarterly loss

Wall Street Journal ^ | 4/24/2019 | Tim Higgins

[nathanbedford]

I admit the pork, but I’d say as far as gummint pork goes Elon has been the most productive by A MILE

Fine, but how do you measure the pork? It is not just the subsidies, is not just the tax dollars not collected, it is a very large but unmeasurable opportunity cost. How many dollars from our economy were diverted to building electric cars rather than inventing and implementing the next steam engine? The next iPhone? The next cure for cancer?

How do we know that electric cars are desirable? Because there has been a concerted effort to sell the notion of climate change? How do we know that electric cars will significantly contribute to solving climate change? How do we measure this? When we divert great chunks of our economy to building electric cars or to building solar panels or windmills, how do we know? Where is the data, who connects the data points?

The genius of America up until the Great Depression (the building of the railroads not forgotten) was to leave these allocation of resources up to the free market. Leftists will tell us that the free market squanders money, they will tell us that it is more democratic to let the government decide where resources should be allocated. In other words, a few ignorant congress people or a few anointed experts in academia or in the bureaucracy know better where to spend our dollars than do those who earned them.

Actually, a housewife in the supermarket votes with her family's precious funds budgeted for shopping and casts her vote with every purchase. Her decision is far more democratic than those of a representative thousand miles away or a bureaucrat tucked away in the bowels of the deep state.

Decision-making by government has not worked out well in Russia, India, Cuba, Venezuela and in many parts of Latin America. The left will tell us that it has worked out well in China but one must consider that it originally worked out tragically in China and what has in fact worked out well in China has been a retreat from the mentality that the government knows best. Even while Russia was filling its gulags and starving millions of kulaks, the left was telling us that five-year plans were the future. FDR was a admirer of Mussolini.

So the left write books like The Affluent Society telling us that because we put chrome on cars rather than build bigger liberal arts colleges, these decisions should be taken away from us and bestowed upon our elected representatives, or their agents in the bureaucracy, all under the wise guidance of elite academics.

The human ego is a subject as old as Genesis and the Garden of Eden. The urge to play God is an undeniably powerful engine to the leftists whose corporal bodies are merely life-support systems for their drive for power.

All of the money that has been spent on Elon musk and his various schemes, or on windmills, on solar panels (favoring, coincidentally, major contributors to the Obama campaigns), is money not available for curing cancer.

We make these decisions without regard to the opportunity cost and without even the slightest accounting of the true costs much less the real need. This is not a question of building a bridge, this is a question of creating a whole new industry for which we cannot even begin to count the cost or begin to assess the actual need.

We cannot count the costs and we cannot begin to know the harm.

[TexasGator]

“How would electric cars fair in below-zero weather?”

thousands of examples. just google.

[TexasGator]

“. Her decision is far more democratic than those of a representative thousand miles away”

Bernie agrees.

[nathanbedford]

What?

[jonrick46]

I thought of the same thing. This winter has been cold and those Tesla batteries do not do well in cold weather. Imagine being stranded in your car when it ran out of power because the cold shortened its range. Getting that dead car to a recharging station meant a nasty tow bill.

[Fledermaus]

Why am I paying taxes to subsidize this modern day DeLorean?

[Fledermaus]

Oh, and for idiots that don’t understand the real world...where do you think electricity comes from? FOSSIL FUELS!

[vortec94]

Tesla sounds more like Tucker every day

[dp0622]

That’s why there’s a Dodge Challenger in front of my house and not a Tesla.

Because i don’t want one!!!

I don’t want an electronic car. Not yet at least.

I ALWAYS HEAR how GREAT they’ve gotten with speed and how fast they are to charge.

Then why aren’t they selling out!?!?!

[Bullish]

Lots of investors ended up paying out the nose to “feel” green.

[jonrick46]

Electric engines can be more than 90% efficient and even up to 98% efficient while combustion engines are 30 to 45%. However, this does not take into consideration the electric power transmission loss, which is between 8 and 15%. Then there is the electric generation which has different efficiencies depending on the mode of transmission. A coal fired plant will be about 33% to 40% efficient. Adding the power loss, and you have about the same efficiency as a gas powered engine. These calculation are something I could not do but there are those who do and it is a wonder why the information is not being used to shows how overrated electric cars are.

[TexasGator]

Direct voting instead of representative government.

[nathanbedford]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3744221/posts?page=32#32

Incidentally, I see no inconsistencies between the views expressed in the reference above with those expressed today on this thread.

[nathanbedford]

How about biofuels?

[altura]

The Tesla is too expensive to ever be a best seller. But my SIL has a Prius and my daughter has a Volt and both cars have been eminently satisfactory. Of course, we live in Maui so no weather problems, but high gas prices so they make sense for us.

[dp0622]

I even read that i can get the power I want.

And the newest ones charge very quickly.

And gas prices suck.

Anyway, I will have this challenger for a while so the point is moot until about 5 years.

[SunkenCiv]

Amazon wasn’t profitable for its first 14 years, but of course, we know what a failure it has become. ;^)

In February, Tesla sold 75 percent of the EVs sold in the world.

In the US, the Model 3 has a much higher price than Honda and Toyota models it’s in the process of overtaking in sales.

I doubt that I’d buy TSLA stock, other than perhaps ten shares or so, ten more if the price slipped a bunch again. It’s been a roller coaster ride, and I prefer to watch from the concessions stand.

[Crazieman]

Based zoomer. You should totally get this reference

[jonrick46]

From what I understand, biofuels require oil-derived fertilizers to get the yields for making a profit. The fuel for the farm equipment and transportation makes the ethanol produced a negative energy gain. Their impact on food prices is even more of a economic sink hole. Biomass holds more promise as a great variety of biofuels can be produced from lignocellulose biomass. Then there is algae derived fuels, which holds even greater promise. Algae to fuel has been a long road towards development. Then there is the fuel cell which will create electricity from hydrogen proton exchange membranes. All of this technology is being developed to replace the inadequate methods being used today.

[Jim Noble]

I just sat in a Model X last night.

If I didn’t live in a frozen hellscape and commute 100 miles a day, I’d buy one.