Posted on 08/08/2017 4:04:19 AM PDT by EyesOfTX
Elon Musk is a very creative guy. We all know it, and often admire it. He’s the guy who’s going to colonize Mars, the guy who’s going to roof your house with solar shingle and pave highways with solar pavers. He’s also the guy who is now bringing us the Tesla 3 electric motor car, his new, more compact and sporty model for which he claims to have already received 500,000 orders. It’s all so wonderful, and his giant PR operation issues about 27 press releases a week bragging about his every move. Well, ok, not quote every move.
Here’s what Elon Musk’s thousands of PR agents never brag about: None of his very creative ideas work without very heavy government subsidies. The fact is that his various ventures in the United States alone have already brought him more than $5 billion in government subsidies, a legacy of the crony capitalism in which the Obama Administration was so heavily engaged. That amounts to about half of Musk’s personal net worth, and those subsidies are the only reason his car company has been able to eke out “profits” in just 2 quarters during its entire existence. Indeed, buyers of Teslas in the U.S. receive a big subsidy check from the federal government – the subsidy for the new Tesla 3 is $7500 – and also received state subsidies from taxpayers in many states. California’s state subsidy (because of course California has a taxpayer subsidy for this stuff) is $2500, meaning that preening celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio can make themselves feel better by buying a Tesla, and enjoy a gift of a total of $10 grand from middle class America. Cool, right?
(Excerpt) Read more at dbdailyupdate.com ...
http://jalopnik.com/tesla-needs-another-1-5-billion-to-bolster-model-3-pro-1797589862
...huge demand is proving tough for Tesla to meet. The company cut pricing of the Model X minivan, arguably to lure people away from the Model 3, which Elon Musk admits he won’t be able to supply for some time...
...Clearly, this Model 3 launch is a challenge that requires significant capital up front for the Fremont-based EV company, and now Tesla says in a press release that it plans to sell $1.5 billion in “aggregate principal amount of its senior notes due 2025.”...
Prince Andrew of the House of Cuomo forked over $1 Billion in tax dollars for “Solar City” in Buffalo NY. Musk ‘may’ start building panels there by the end of the year. SMH.
The government has helped along beneficial technologies many times. Electric cars are fine, and provide very tangible benefits. If we have a sane move back to more nuclear in the electric generation mix, along with more solar+storage, they will help get rid of air pollution.
The tax credit for electric cars begins phasing out for a manufacturer once it’s sold 200,000 vehicles. That should happen fairly soon with Tesla.
They don’t get rid of pollution, they MOVE the pollution. Making solar cells is an extremely dirty business which is done largely in China. Making EVs requires huge amounts of scarce Lithium, there’s are few high grade Lithium deposits in the world, most in sensitive arid areas. The toxic waste streams from EVs are,going to be huge and the infrastructure to process used battery packs hasn’t been built. Will we put it in an extremely poor nation so people can pick apart the cars for $1/day? Most power opinion the US I should still generated by coal, so you have concentrated the emissions at one point instead of spreading it out to tens of millions of internal combustion engines all over the place.
EVs may be good for making city air cleaner, but always keep in mind you are MOVING the pollution elsewhere and changing its form, not ending it.
I would never trust a CEO whose name sounds like an after-shave lotion.
My Model 3 will be ready between February and April of 2018. Can’t wait.
“They don’t get rid of pollution, they MOVE the pollution. Making solar cells is an extremely dirty business which is done largely in China. Making EVs requires huge amounts of scarce Lithium, there’s are few high grade Lithium deposits in the world, most in sensitive arid areas. The toxic waste streams from EVs are,going to be huge and the infrastructure to process used battery packs hasn’t been built. Will we put it in an extremely poor nation so people can pick apart the cars for $1/day?”
I’m an advocate of modular nuclear power (small modular plants). ThorCon and NuScale are two companies in that space with good ideas. There are several others as well.
http://thorconpower.com
http://www.nuscalepower.com/
I suggest watching the video on this page:
http://thorconpower.com/news
These reactors will produce power at around three cents per KWH. That’s far cheaper than either fossil fuels or renewables. ThorCon is actively working to build large numbers of reactors for both India and Indonesia. They’ll supply them to the US as well, if we can fix our insane regulatory environment.
“Most power opinion the US I should still generated by coal, so you have concentrated the emissions at one point instead of spreading it out to tens of millions of internal combustion engines all over the place.”
Coal isn’t cost competitive with natural gas at this point. It also has a severe impact on the environment outside of CO2.
“EVs may be good for making city air cleaner, but always keep in mind you are MOVING the pollution elsewhere and changing its form, not ending it.”
That’s not the case if the power is generated by nuclear energy. The nuclear waste “problem” is an enormous red herring.
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