This is a pretty revisionist & cynical take. From what I remember, before Tesla EVs used to be seen as glorified golf carts, only meant for inner-city driving that only hard-core environmentalists would even want.
Tesla flipped that on its head and showed the world that EVs could be cool. As a new car company, it also makes sense to start with the high-margins, low-volumes of luxury cars.
What’s sad is that the rest of the car industry, who already had low-margins high-volumes manufacturing up & running, didn’t pick up the pace and only chased the “luxury” segment. Also, Tesla majorly dropped the ball with the Cybertruck. Model 3 is a good mid-range sedan but they should’ve continued their efforts towards a good entry-level option.
Is it revisionism if I always thought giving the vast majority of EV subsidies to a single company ran by a con man for them to not offer affordable EVs was a bad idea?
It’s not even a conspiracy theory that Big Oil fights EV and clean energy progress in any way they can, because they have been caught doing it for at least the last 70 years!
Also EVs were popularized in the 1970s in the US, but oil conglomerates coordinated to fuck with those too.
Tesla getting the majority of subsidies is a sad state of affairs, that’s true. But I think it’s more due to the rest of the market being exceedingly slow to react than anything Tesla specifically did. Elon back then was overly optimistic in his timelines, but I don’t think it rose to the level of being a con man (now with Twitter / X and DOGE it’s a different story, I won’t argue with you on that!)
I wasn’t born in the 1970s so I don’t remember what the public opinion on EVs were at that time.
I won’t argue that Big Oil has always been up to nefarious things, but “creating Tesla” isn’t one of them.
Before he started radicalizing himself he was making 1 on 1 deals with Obama to guarentee subsidies for Tesla and SpaceX, Elon got tens of billions from the government and tens of billions from private investors through personal deals.
That’s why he got most of them
But i agree that American car manufacturers had been coasting for a long time before Tesla ate their lunch.
The idea of the government subsidizing car manufacturing is for the companies to artificially make the price low so the cars can be distributed.
Tesla didn’t do that.
They charged prices that they would make a profit, pretending they weren’t being given over $100billion for free, then Elon got the shareholders to pay out the extra to him in a bonus.
It was a direct transfer of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into stock buybacks for the richest man in the world.
This is a pretty revisionist & cynical take. From what I remember, before Tesla EVs used to be seen as glorified golf carts, only meant for inner-city driving that only hard-core environmentalists would even want.
Tesla flipped that on its head and showed the world that EVs could be cool. As a new car company, it also makes sense to start with the high-margins, low-volumes of luxury cars.
What’s sad is that the rest of the car industry, who already had low-margins high-volumes manufacturing up & running, didn’t pick up the pace and only chased the “luxury” segment. Also, Tesla majorly dropped the ball with the Cybertruck. Model 3 is a good mid-range sedan but they should’ve continued their efforts towards a good entry-level option.
Is it revisionism if I always thought giving the vast majority of EV subsidies to a single company ran by a con man for them to not offer affordable EVs was a bad idea?
It’s not even a conspiracy theory that Big Oil fights EV and clean energy progress in any way they can, because they have been caught doing it for at least the last 70 years!
Also EVs were popularized in the 1970s in the US, but oil conglomerates coordinated to fuck with those too.
https://cleantechnica.com/2021/09/30/the-legendary-electric-car-from-the-1970s-that-led-us-electric-car-sales-until-tesla-came-along/
Tesla getting the majority of subsidies is a sad state of affairs, that’s true. But I think it’s more due to the rest of the market being exceedingly slow to react than anything Tesla specifically did. Elon back then was overly optimistic in his timelines, but I don’t think it rose to the level of being a con man (now with Twitter / X and DOGE it’s a different story, I won’t argue with you on that!)
I wasn’t born in the 1970s so I don’t remember what the public opinion on EVs were at that time.
I won’t argue that Big Oil has always been up to nefarious things, but “creating Tesla” isn’t one of them.
Before he started radicalizing himself he was making 1 on 1 deals with Obama to guarentee subsidies for Tesla and SpaceX, Elon got tens of billions from the government and tens of billions from private investors through personal deals.
That’s why he got most of them
But i agree that American car manufacturers had been coasting for a long time before Tesla ate their lunch.
Man fuck Elon but batteries only just got affordable enough to make EVs cost competitive.
Back then you basically had to sell a luxury/sports car to have enough wiggle room to justify the price.
Batteries are the entire story of EVs
The idea of the government subsidizing car manufacturing is for the companies to artificially make the price low so the cars can be distributed.
Tesla didn’t do that.
They charged prices that they would make a profit, pretending they weren’t being given over $100billion for free, then Elon got the shareholders to pay out the extra to him in a bonus.
It was a direct transfer of tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into stock buybacks for the richest man in the world.
The Legacy car industry just straight up didn’t want to retool for electric cars. That’s why it’s mostly new companies to the seriously pursuing it
I’m not buying it.
Here’s a documentary about oil and auto companies sabotaging another electric car in the 90s
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0489037/