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Tesla's Fight With Car Dealers Could Help Decide the Next Presidential Election
Hugh Pickens DOT Com (2995471) writes "Marcus Wohlsen writes that the most recent ban against Tesla selling cars directly from the company instead of through third-party dealers was enacted in New Jersey with the support of Gov. Chris Christie, a possible contender for the GOP nomination. That prompted Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, a Christie rival, to heartily defend Tesla's direct sales model. 'Customers should be allowed to buy products that fit their need,' says Rubio, 'especially a product that we know is safe and has consumer confidence beneath it.' Perhaps even more surprising is the love shown by Texas Gov. Rick Perry, the once and possibly future presidential hopeful whose oil-rich state bars employees in Tesla's two showrooms from even telling potential customers how much the Model S costs. 'I think it's time for Texans to have an open conversation about this,' says Perry, 'the pros and the cons. I'm gonna think the pros of allowing this to happen outweigh the cons.' The sudden GOP embrace of an electric car company once reviled as a symbol of Northern California enivro-weenies might seem ironic says Wohlsen, but the real irony is that conservative politicians ever opposed Tesla at all.
'The widespread franchise rules giving car dealers virtual monopolies in their territories epitomize the government-controlled marketplace Republicans purportedly despise,' writes Wohlsen adding that possible presidential contenders realize there may be political capital to be gained in supporting Tesla. But the real winner is Tesla. If the company can manage to associate its brand with all the positive qualities Rubio and Perry hope rub off on them, few politicians will want to take the risk to stand against them. Mitt Romney called Tesla Motors a 'loser' company during his 2012 run for president. In 2016 running against Tesla might seem about as smart as running against Apple."
'The widespread franchise rules giving car dealers virtual monopolies in their territories epitomize the government-controlled marketplace Republicans purportedly despise,' writes Wohlsen adding that possible presidential contenders realize there may be political capital to be gained in supporting Tesla. But the real winner is Tesla. If the company can manage to associate its brand with all the positive qualities Rubio and Perry hope rub off on them, few politicians will want to take the risk to stand against them. Mitt Romney called Tesla Motors a 'loser' company during his 2012 run for president. In 2016 running against Tesla might seem about as smart as running against Apple."
And then he called them "consumers."
Protip: That's the derogatory term economists use for the general public when they're feeling especially sociopathic.
As a Gary Johnson fan, I'm curious what his stance on the whole deal with Tesla is. This is relevant since I may want to vote for him next election, and the implications of his opinions on this matter are going to reflect across his Presidential policies and how he encourages Congress and the American People to act.
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not after the bridgegate fiasco
then add withholding funds from hoboken because they didn't let a developer run rampant
hiring friends and family for a state marketing campaign
Sounds like a few politicians had just enough time to move some of their investments into Tesla before legalizing direct sales.
The governors will talk about how good Tesla is but their day job is still governor and that office is under the thumb of the National Automotive Dealers Association who could easily contribute to their rivals.
The state laws that prevent direct sales of automobiles should be criminal because it preserves the insane concept of "negotiating" the best price. Hopefully Tesla will go farther than cars.com did.
A layperson would think that the state laws would go against the US Constitutions commerce clause.
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I can EVs helping both sides. The left benefits because shifting to solar/wind power as the primary means of a vehicle's propulsion is better for the environment and gives less fossil fuel waste.
The right benefits by EVs because they offer energy independence (something the Tea Party strongly pushes for), a nod towards Big Coal, and less reliance on oil.
This happened with solar last year... both the Tea Party and the far left greens have ended up agreeing on the importance on this... which is ironic because Congress didn't lift a finger when China hacked US solar companies, then started selling panels for cheaper than the rare earths it took to make them, thus causing most panels to be imported rather than made domestically.
I guess we know where Elon gets those ripped, cut jaw muscles now...
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the company and their models have changed since 2012.
Tesla is in an odd place in conservative conversations, because it hasn't sunk in yet that this is the first electric car that's not a joke played on hippies. The Model S really did change the landscape (and, hey, we wouldn't be conservatives if we embraced change quickly). Now people on the right are starting to realize that this could be the new American Car Company to rally behind, now that "Government Motors" is on the lifetime-ban list of many on the right after the bailouts.
Speaking of changing landscapes, people need to shed the silly notion that "oil companies" oppose electric cars. There are no large "oil companies" any more, they're all "energy companies" now, and they're just as happy to sell natural gas to electric companies as they are to sell oil at the pump.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
To anyone who actually understands how the Republican party operates, there is no irony because they are little more than two-faced hypocrites. They preach limited government but then try to regulate the bedroom, who can get abortions, who can get married and birth control. They preach freedom but use eminent domain to steal people's property (the Keystone Pipeline they are so fond of is built on stolen land) and funnel trillions of dollars into the military industrial complex so that more people can be bombed. They preach lower taxes but then raise taxes on everyone except the super-rich.
They (along with the Democrat party, which is the same shit but different rhetoric) are little more than corporate prostitutes who are available to the highest bidder. The stealerships in this case have more money combined than Tesla. So no, there is no irony because I expected nothing less from the Republican party than cronyist statism.
They'll make a heck of a lot more if they are selling gas at the pump than natural gas to the electric company.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Demographics, not electric car business models are going to decide the next Presidential elections.
Republicans have won the Presidential popular vote only ONCE since 1988 (Bush v, Kerry, and that was an incumbent).
There are no large "oil companies" any more, they're all "energy companies" now
Exxon-Mobil is not an energy company in the general sense nor are most of their competitors. They make their money in oil and gas. They may call themselves an energy company but you are what you do and what they do is fossil fuels. Calling themselves an energy company is just marketing spin.
From bondage to spiritual faith; From spiritual faith to great courage; From courage to liberty; From liberty to abundance; From abundance to selfishness; From selfishness to complacency; From complacency to apathy; From apathy to dependence; From dependence back into bondage.
Thanks for the insight Yoda
I think even the Nissan Leaf is more than 20 000$, so it might take a while for Tesla to offer something in that price range.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Because it is unlikely to be true. Anyone can go to the Tesla website and check the prices. You will get the car at the price listed on the site, no more and no less.
If he is talking about financing, nothing forces you to finance the car through Tesla. In my part of the world one usually borrows the money in a bank and this is how it is done when buying from a dealer too.
'The widespread franchise rules giving car dealers virtual monopolies in their territories epitomize the government-controlled marketplace Republicans purportedly despise,' writes Wohlsen
yes, but they also epitomize the lobbyist-controlled cash funnel republicans love. money is by far more important than having actual values.
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Is this the MPAA? Is this the RIAA? Is this the DMCA? I thought it was the USA!
Unless of course Tesla has the smart idea to make electric motorcycles and/or scooters.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
The reality is electric cars are wayyyyy less profitable for "energy companies" than gasoline cars.
Mainly because you can put this thing called solar panels on your roof and charge your cars with your own generated electricity (either directly, or sell your surplus to the grid during the day and buy it back in the wee hours when your car is home charging).
Electric Vehicles + Solar panels are the kiss of death for all fossil fuel based energy companies.
Not true. Distribution costs, refining costs, additives, marketing, etc make selling gasoline much more expensive than selling directly to an electric company. Not to mention we have a surplus of natural gas, where as we're importing oil, again making oil (and hence gasoline) more expensive.
In case anybody is curious, the next Presidential election is over two years away, none of the horse race talk means a goddamn thing right now. This is just talking heads needing to fill airtime with inane babble because covering the events in Crimea would be too depressing.
I read the internet for the articles.
but the real irony is that conservative politicians ever opposed Tesla at all.
Republicans are more interested in established businesses and their business models. Tesla is trying to break the dealership business model and big GOP contributors do not like that.
Never gonna happen. But if you buy the base Tesla and drive it a lot for 15 years, in the end, the cost of the car is fully paid by savings in gas and maintenance.
That's right, the car comes out essentially free if you drive it a lot (and keep it for a really long time).
Electrical battery prices will drop but not that much. They will always keep EVs significantly more expensive than normal gas cars, but you can save $5K / yr in gas and maintenance costs if you drive a lot (and put solar panels in your house).
Too many of the general public confuse 'conservatives' with 'Republicans.' The Republicrat Party is a matched pair of umbrella organizations set up to protect given sets of special interests, which involve significant overlap, from real-world economics and public accountability. The left-hand half of this party just got through putting together a tax-supported national healthcare system that carefully avoids interfering with the legal armor that allows the pharma business and the hospital business to screw us blind. Rank-and-file leftists never got the healthcare cost controls they craved. Meanwhile, the right-hand segment of the party spouts capitalist rhetoric while being careful not to bring up the idea of subjecting the same set of big donors to the free-market competition that its own base has always wished for.
We of the dark side have been generally suspicious of electric cars because of the perception that most purchases are made with cushy tax subsidies, rather than inherent merit, in mind. There is also a cultural bias factor ("University hippies buy these, so they must be bad...") which works both ways. I recently had a relative profess shock that, despite my politics, I recycle. I had to explain to her that hating environmental activists doesn't have to mean hating the environment itself. We feel batter about Tesla than about the Leaf and its ilk because it's the first electric vehicle that is being successfully marketed to people who take economics seriously (still early-adopter pricing, but with decent range and performance), and that it comes from Silicon Valley rather than being an afterthought product, withdrawn at the first hint of technical difficulties, marketed to guilt-ridden academics. Tesla intends to make this product a success, and is putting in the infrastructure it will take to make it so.
I know someone who just tried to buy a Tesla. What they told him it would cost, what he would get, and so on sounded like a reasonable deal. He did the test drive and loved it and was all excited about getting it. Then the REAL numbers came up.
So he went to a Tesla showroom where someone gave him some lowball numbers to get him to do a test ride, then when it came time to actually do the sale, the numbers were higher? How is this different than buying from a dealer?
NO DEALERSHIP does a bait and switch even half as bad as Tesla does. They added $30K to the price and over doubled the monthly payment. The down payment also went from $2K to $35K.
This part of the story doesn't really make sense -- I don't really see how adding $30K to the price *and* requiring an additional $33K downpayment requirement could have doubled the monthly payment he was expecting. Unless his credit warranted such a high interest rate that the monthly payment was higher than expected. Which may be what happened since they also upped the downpayment from the standard 10% advertised on their website to 30% - 50%.
I know someone that bought a Tesla a few months back and he said he paid the same price they list on their website. He didn't need to finance it, but I'd imagine that most shoppers for a $70 - $100K car don't need dealer financing.
If they had dealerships and one did this to you, at least you could go to another one to buy the car. With their model you either take their bait and switch or don't get their car. I think their business model is pure fail if they are doing the same to everyone else.
Well, the difference is that the car's list price would be set higher so the dealer could "give" you $30K off the list price of the car so you think you're getting a good deal, then the finance guy in the back room will make you think that the 72 month financing at 20% interest is a fantastic deal but you have to buy today because when his boss comes in Monday he'll cancel the deal since the dealership is losing money on the sale.
Republicans have won the Presidential popular vote only ONCE since 1988 (Bush v, Kerry, and that was an incumbent).
And the democrats only won it once between 1968 and 1992. What's your point? Most of the elections were fairly close and the losses had less to do with demographics than the candidates who were running. Bush Sr kind of blew it against Clinton but that election could have gone either way. Clinton loses and I'm not sure the democrats had anyone who would obviously have won in 1996. Bush Jr could easily have lost in 2004 and arguably did lose in 2000. Neither of Obama's wins were blowouts either. The only real blowouts I can remember are Reagan's wins, particularly in 1984 against Mondale. It wouldn't be shocking to see a republican in the white house in 2016. Just depends on who's running and how things play out.
The biggest problem the republicans have is that they push for policies that tend to repel anyone who isn't older white and usually male. Women, blacks, hispanics, LBGT, and most other minority groups tend to vote democrat. Some very strongly so. The republicans have also tied their mast to conservative religious groups who tie their hands on social issues. They have gotten away from the idea of sensible fiscal policy in order to wage a futile jihad on taxes and have shut the government down twice over the issue.
I keep trying to vote myself more bennies, but I never seem to find it.... I know, I know, you think Democrats give away Money to Poor People. I think our government gives away money to Rich People. As someone who got government help with food and education when I was younger, I think I've more than paid back in taxes from the fancy job that helped me get. Hooray for a Hand Up. Everyone benefited.
And frankly, you're pissed that people are trying to vote themselves more benefits from the public treasury? Isn't that kind of how it works? Isn't that a democracy in action? What are you complaining about? Would you rather people NOT be able to vote in their own best interests? What do you think is better? The alternative looks a lot like a dicatorship to me.
I don't think you can actually say that every democracy collapses due to loose fiscal policy, followed by dictatorship. I'd like some examples. Democracy is relatively new. Empire isn't, but democracy is. Where are all these failed democracies that are now dictatorships? I can name many dictatorships in the world. None of them started as democracies. North Korea? Syria?
I think that's what you WANT to believe, but I don't think you have any examples to back up what you just said.
I am actually horrified and disgusted by your weird little history lesson on greatest civilizations. What does spiritual faith have to do with it? bondage? They ALL rose up from bondage? courage? What courage? Empires arise from many things. Greed. Lustful economics. Courage rarely has anything to do with it. Liberty? What liberty did the Roman slaves have? What liberty did the United Kingdom bring to the world? What liberty have we? Oh, and THEN we got selfishness, riiiiight. We were all courageous pious people of spiritual faith, but THEN we got all selfish?
I think you're making all of this up so you can be mad at Democrats (which really, has nothing to do with anything. ) I think you don't have any REAL reasons to be mad at them, so you have to make up this claptrap so you can feel properly outraged. I'm not a Dem. I'm independant. But if you're going to hate someone, at least hate them for REAL reasons....
Would you like some real reasons to hate Dems? I can give you plenty.
Also, keep the patriotic spiritual marching bullshit to yourself. It's all fake, and we know it. Rah Rah Rah! We're #1! Don't Look Behind The Curtain!
Seriously - Tesla and SpaceX have both turned republican ideology on its head.
Case 1: republicans love the military-industrial complex and always protect their cost-plus pork for defense contractors, while simultaneously claiming to support fiscal responsibility and free-market competition. Once someone shows up actually wanting free market competition in these giant aerospace contracts, the republicans are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Case 2: the republican stance is that all regulation is bad. So is environmentalism, and government loans. Rich people are awesome though, and deserve tax cuts and celebration for all the glorious good they do for the economy. Enter Tesla - a product targeted squarely at the upper end of middle class and higher, which is environmentally minded, got started with renewable energy loans, and which is stirring up areas where regulation legitimately is disrupting market efficiency.
The contortions the republican party has to go through to try to reconcile the inconsistencies highlighted by these companies are hilarious, and representative of the entire redefinition the party is going through. I'm hoping they'll get trounced by the dems another time or two and then emerge as something worthy of sharing a name with the party of Eisenhower, Roosevelt and Lincoln.
I had never considered buying a Tesla. Now, after reading daily stories about it, it seems quite good. Of course, there's the price...
_all_ fossil fuel based energy companies? Surely someone wouldn't be engaging in hyperbole on the internet.
Too many of the general public confuse 'conservatives' with 'Republicans.'
In most cases it is a distinction without a difference. Most conservatives self identify as republicans and vice-versa. There are some outliers but they are the exception that proves the rule.
We of the dark side have been generally suspicious of electric cars because of the perception that most purchases are made with cushy tax subsidies, rather than inherent merit, in mind.
Great logic, because obviously gasoline vehicles never get tax money. Gas companies get TONS of tax subsidies and they are strongly supported by the political right. Lots of industries receive tax subsidies including agriculture, oil, gas, ethanol, coal, steel, aviation, construction, manufacturing, and many more. I find great irony when I hear some rural conservative farmer bitching about subsidies for solar power when he's getting subsidies for the crops he is selling. I guess subsidies are only good when it is for something that benefits you.
There is also a cultural bias factor ("University hippies buy these, so they must be bad...") which works both ways.
Are you really trying to justify hatred by saying "other people do it too"?
I had to explain to her that hating environmental activists doesn't have to mean hating the environment itself.
Why would you hate an environmental activist? Or any other kind of activist for that matter? Arguing passionately for a good cause is no reason to hate someone. Sure there are a few real looney-toons out there but most are basically just trying to push for a healthy planet and a nice place to live.
Source?
"Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge"
- Charles Darwin
Too many of the general public confuse 'conservatives' with 'Republicans.'
There is no confusion going on there. See, for example, this:
We of the dark side have been generally suspicious of electric cars because of the perception that most purchases are made with cushy tax subsidies, rather than inherent merit, in mind.
This idea is straight out of boilerplate Republican rhetoric, and it reflects an ideological blinder central to conservative Republican politics. You never, ever allow yourselves to contemplate the merest iota of a chance that the Holy Free Market might not be 100% perfect at governing the future of society. No sir, there is no chance at all that in the real world, absent government intervention, superior solutions may rot on the sideline because the market often lacks a mechanism for pushing itself out of local minima. And there is also no chance at all that unregulated markets will fill with rent-seekers who do their best to put higher walls around the local minimum they're occupying. None at all!
Keep your ears firmly plugged, little conservative lapdogs. You must not let disapproved doubleplus ungood facts in. Continue repeating Republican mantras as necessary whenever reality intrudes.
There is also a cultural bias factor ("University hippies buy these, so they must be bad...") which works both ways. I recently had a relative profess shock that, despite my politics, I recycle. I had to explain to her that hating environmental activists doesn't have to mean hating the environment itself.
It is telling that you take it as a given that environmental activists must be hated.
We feel batter about Tesla than about the Leaf and its ilk because it's the first electric vehicle that is being successfully marketed to people who take economics seriously
It is equally telling that you think anyone on the left, by definition, does not take economics seriously.
Hint: it's you. You're the guys who don't take economics seriously. You refuse to pay any attention at all to serious attempts to analyze economics (by which I mean ones which attempt for academic rigor). You constantly shout down attempts to do so. You rely instead on a toxic mix of tribal rhetoric and slavish devotion to disproven absolutist ideas about the infinite superiority of the unregulated invisible hand. (Betraying, by the way, that you haven't even seriously read the works of the man who invented the term "invisible hand". Adam Smith would be quite leftist by modern U.S. political standards, as he was a firm believer in making markets more free by regulating them. You see, he recognized that players in a market, particularly on the "supply side", will attempt to make it less free to protect their own interests.)
In short: fuck off, conservative. Your "ohhhhh, the Republicans are nae true Scotsmen" spin and your attempts to put yourself on the good side of a few issues while still clinging to the bad side are transparently dishonest.
Why even market gas? When you have a captive market, why waste the money?
A few years old, but a very very educational series of articles:
http://www.edmunds.com/car-buy...
I think the examples the GP had in mind are Greece and Rome
Perception is the thin dividing line between reality and fiction.
consumer
noun consumer; plural noun: consumers
1. a person who purchases goods and services for personal use.
2. a person or thing that eats or uses something.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
It's not a captive market per say, there's different companies you can purchase gasoline from. To answer your question, because it's profitable? Market how superior your gas is, reel them into the station to buy that, making some profit, then hope they come inside and buy some overpriced convenience store stuff, making LOTS of profit.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Republicans BAD! Vote for the people who are in your own economic self-interest. Vote for those who promise you free money!
Well, as I'm not a billionaire, I'll vote Democratic then. The Republicans give vastly more money to a much smaller group of millionaire and billionaire business interests. Forget the unnecessary wars, I also vote Democratic because there not as big a group of hypocrites. The Repubs claim to want small government, but they want to say who can have sex and what happens afterward. I'd rather pay taxes for healthcare than for sex police.
Dems Social policy: We're doctors! We'll tax everyone to provide healthcare!
Repubs: We're the Sex Police! We'll say who can have what sex with who, and what they can do afterwards!
F that.
"The widespread franchise rules giving car dealers virtual monopolies in their territories "
If there were only one or two car manufacturers, sure, that would be a monopoly. Yes, in this case the franchise model is enforced by the government, but that doesn't automatically make it monopolistic. Plenty of franchisers outside of the auto industry have self-imposed rules regarding franchise location. That's why you don't see two McDonalds across the street from each other.
Which is more monopolistic: A system that forces car manufacturers to sell to consumers through independent dealers--many of whom carry more than one brand, or a system where the manufacturer owns the whole distribution chain, including the dealer?
I actually don't have a problem with Tesla's model, and am no fan of dealerships, but let's stop misusing the term "monopoly" to describe the current situation.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
They are basically an "oil and gas" energy company.
To me, a true "energy company" should be producing energy from multiple sources: oil, gas, wind, solar, coal, nuclear, tidal, hydrogen, alcohol, etc.
But the electric car is a very complex product. Most users don't know how to drive a car. They need to be trained and licensed to use one. Remember you don't need a license to be a patient to a doctor or in a hospital. Shows you how complex the automobile is. And you add on top of this electricity, which you can't see. They say Tesla runs on electricity. But I don't want to cars trailing miles and miles of extension cords. They will tangle up in the road and create fire hazard. So electric cars must be sold only via authorized dealers and you should not even be able to buy one across county lines, leave alone state lines.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Most cars require a "major service" every couple of years, which can easily run into a couple thousand bucks
Huh? I've got a 9-year old Toyota Matrix. It gets an oil change twice a year at about $50 each time, and has had one transmission oil flush at a few hundred bucks, one radiator fluid flush, and new low beam bulbs. I just replaced the clock spring myself for a few hundred bucks. Soonish it'll need new brake pads and new spark plugs.
What is this "major service" you speak of?
I think the conversation, and the resulting political tie-in, is more about US franchise law and auto dealers dependence on said laws, than they are about an electric car, conservative ideology, or any particular politician.
Auto dealer groups comprise a powerful lobby with massive dollars to spend on politicians and long standing relationships with our governing bodies. These dealer groups are by and large threatened by Tesla's "direct to customer" model because it cuts them right out of the picture. Their greatest fear is once Tesla has cemented this as a viable and legal distribution method for their cars, what will stop other manufacturers from following suit and putting the franchise auto dealers out of business?
Thus, state and national auto dealer groups have been exerting whatever influence they can to maintain the status quo concerning franchise law, and this means standing in opposition to Tesla's business model. It really has nothing to do with the car, nor does it have anything to do with conservative thinking, or even that the car is electric. It is merely about the fact that lots of people who have been making lots of money for a very long time under current franchise law don't want to see that change. If it does you might begin to see manufacturers buying out their franchise dealers and running their own operations for sales and service in the US.
If all manufacturers go to this distribution model, or have it as an available choice, what does that mean for us?
1) Does that mean some of the prohibitive barriers to successfully producing and marketing a new car make have suddenly disappeared? I think that may be a yes, and that's possibly a good thing. More choice, more avenues for innovation and economic opportunity. On the downside, a lack of required infrastructure, like service facilities, dealerships where they have staff on hand to take care of the customers, etc. can make the ownership experience particularly daunting. I think Tesla has handled this right, however another company coming along after them might not. This is a major point of contention in the franchise law battle. Currently manufacturers are required to have a certain number of service facilities and sales floors.
2) Would widespread adoption of Tesla's business model by other manufacturers adversely affect prices? I think it *could* result in lower prices for cars and related services as you could cut out a middleman. However, imagine if every Ford dealer in your state was owned by the same company. That would reduce or even eliminate competition, and make it very easy to have institutionalized price fixing that would be very difficult to detect and prosecute. Less competition is bad for customers in general, and bad for companies as well as there is no drive to perform better, work harder, give better customer service than the other guy.
3) How will this affect jobs? The economy, etc.?
This really needs a lot of thought put in to it. Its not as simple as just saying, "Hey, its Tesla, its an awesome car, and an awesome idea, lets just let them do it." Its about all of the other manufacturers that are eying this exchange and getting ready to start pushing boundaries themselves. Where that will lead is really uncertain.
When the only tool you have is a claw hammer every problem starts to look like the back of someone's skull.
You must be new around here...
The problem with negotiating the price is that it makes people feel like they might have gotten a worse deal then the next guy, and it eats at them.
We in North America generally don't negotiate prices for new items. You go to the store, you buy the item, you pay the same as the next guy. (Unless you're buying high volume, or are a contractor, or something.) Generally the only new things we negotiate on are cars. Even most new houses have a set price.
Ford can fix whatever price it wants to (you don't think Ford dealers compete with one another on price, do you?). That's not important, as there are many brands. Let Ford sell cars their way, and Tesla do their own thing, and trust the customers to favor the model best for the customers.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
You are going to need a LOT of solar panels to do this and also note most people are home at NIGHT when this is not going to work out so well ;)
You are going to need a LOT of solar panels to do this and also note most people are home at NIGHT when this is not going to work out so well ;)
Note: using solar to power your car is through offsetting your daily electricity use and powering at night - you don't actually have to use the *specific electrons collected by photonics deposits on your solar panel* to power the electric car.
The end result is the same - car gets juice (usually the cheaper variety if you're hooked up with a smart meter) and you pay less.
Hell, Musk even has a company that helps homeowners do just that - SolarCity - without all the overhead of buying the panels and installing them yourself.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Repair? Tesla themselves, free of charge in many cases. They'll even come get the car for you if needed, most dealerships won't do that.
Regular maintenance? *What* regular maintenance? Les Schwab or your preferred local alternative can rotate the tires and check the brakes for you. Not much else is needed... no oil, no spark plugs, no transmission (in the conventional sense), etc.
Most folks not into the electric/hybrid ownership thang just don't get this - the dividends for a hybrid (and doubly so for a pure electric) are in the small things - great acceleration "curves", quieter cabin, keyless entry, reduced maintenance, no transmission changes ever, oil changes that always came back clean even when I do them yearly, etc etc. And the Tesla takes it to a whole new level.
It's not the MPG that sold me on the Prius 10 years ago (and that I still drive daily with 50+mpg), it the fact that it felt like spaceship when it "booted" and all the other things that no other car at the time could do. The new Telsa faux-mercial exemplifies this: http://www.thecarconnection.co...
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
The conflict of interest between the customer and the consumer is very big. For example a physics simulation company would sell design analysis tools. Its customer is the company that buys those tools, your Intel, Apple, BMW, Toyota... whatever. The consumer is an employee of that corporation. The customer wants the tools to be easy to use, and produce accurate reliable answers all the time. But the consumer wants the product to be easy to use on some parts but very difficult to use in other parts. He/she wants a tough learning curve to create a barrier to entry, and the results to get more accurate using less resources depending on experience. Customer wants even newbies to learn to use it quickly and produce as good a result as the veterans. There is a conflict of interest between customer and the user.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
It wouldn't be that hard to have an energy reservoir that fills during the sunlight hours, then charges your car when you plug it in.
After all, the sales of guns and PDF inspection software went way up because of the prez election.
Table-ized A.I.
Years sgo when Exxon was posting billion dollar quarterly profits and gas was around $5.00 a gallon, we did some math and determined that along the entire supply chain, they were making about 25 cents per gallon total over the costs of crude. Of course they operate on 5 different continents so the massive profits were due to volume more than anything.
Anyways, the CEO of both exxon and bp oil were talking about delivering alternative energy when it became viable. I think the BP oil CEO said something along the lines of there being more money to be made in alternative energy like compressed natural gas. It was a while ago so i may be off a bit on which said what.
I think the only thing they fear about energy other than oil is not being involved in it for profits sake.
"There are no large "oil companies" any more, they're all "energy companies" now, "
Wrong. They are "natural resource extraction" companies not energy companies. The two are radically different. A unholy part of economics with no environmental costs, and "unlimited supply." Both ridiculous concepts within the farce that is economics. *see http://www.scientificamerican....
You are full of shit.
Didn't Christie take a bridge too far, piss off everyone who drives and show he is not fit for any position of responsibility?
SpaceX is not doing space exploration. It's doing space logistics.
Jet Propulsion Laboratory---government partnership between NASA and Caltech, filled heavily with scientists & engineers, is doing space exploration and they're reasonably good at it. (the loss of Mars mission due to the famous units problem came about because Congress required a certain piece to go to a typical MIC contractor in a midwest state, and they were using archaic units and assigned the task to an inexperienced fresh graduate to save money. Missions that JPL runs heavily tend to be successful, and sometimes spectacularly successful---Mars Exploration Rovers).
In a nutshell, the change in NASA's attitude and the cancellation of the old Constellation program---which was government doing it poorly, and in particular with money going to deep-red Alabama employees and contractors---came under and with the support of the Obama administration.
Is there any Democratic angst about SpaceX? No, none. And funny enough, they manufacture most of their equipment in Los Angeles area.
Everyone admits NASA is a job engine and not a serious space exploration platform. That is party agnostic.
To be fair it's a very slow kiss of death.
I expect by 2020 Tesla alone will be delivering around 300k vehicles/year. Even at that pace, Tesla will still be less than 5% the number of vehicles delivered than Toyota.
You are conflating to separate aspects.
1 - It will take decades until 50% of new cars sold are electric cars, to get to just 10% of new cars being electric cars should happen from 2020-2025.
2 - Every electric car in the roads are way less profitable for fossil fuel companies
We'll see by 2025 a measurable reduction in oil consumption per capta, since new electric vehicle purchases will trend towards higher utilization cars, so even 20% of all cars in the road being electrical could reduce oil utilization by 35-40%. Right now we're seeing EVs being purchased by green minded rich people. Once EVs are a little bit more affordable and their lower maintenance costs are proven, we'll see people with enough savings to justify owning EVs primarily for their cost X benefit analysis. Then the Oil companies will squirm big time.
So no, I wouldn't short oil companies yet, but between 2020 and 2030 we'll start seeing a substantial challenge to their shareholder value proposition.
The more expensive oil gets, the more economical EVs become. That will be the ultimate kiss of death of the oil companies, they won't be able to capitalize on really expensive oil, because it will be too expensive to compete with EVs. US$ 200 / barrel oil would make EVs very cheap comparatively.
Hey, they're in the S&P Global Energy Sector Index, they're energy companies. Feel free to live in the trees, free of any taint of the farce that is economics, if it bothers you so much. Mean while, they're still as happy to sell natural gas as to sell oil, which was my point.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
It's "per se", not "per say."
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Doesn't even have to be that way. A charging station could easily be designed that stores charge from solar during the day, and transfers it to the vehicle whenever it's parked at the charger, day *or* night.
What I'm really waiting for is ultracaps. When and if they replace batteries, the entire landscape will shift. If they don't, electrics will continue to have a horribly expensive wear-out-and-replace component, and that's going to keep the effective cost very high.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Unlike the U.S. Norway has a very good economy, a higher standard of living and lots of money so consumers don't pay for the recharge (this is called an incentive for the Perry minded types). Nuff said: http://www.npr.org/blogs/paral...
Whilst the tea-party wing of the GOP might be more or less unredeamable wing-nuts, I've never quite understood why the libertarians have tolerated the anti Tesla thing.
Libertarians in recent years have found themselves in the untennable situation of being forced to side with the climate change denialist flat earther society, having to weave weirder and wilder conspiracy theories whilst discarding more and more fundamental science to try and dismiss an unfortunate fact of chemistry and science that was largely proven over a century, because the suggested solution doesnt fit neatly at all into their "no government interventions ever" mindset. The more thoughtful libertarians must surely find this a situation as difficult as the smarter minds in the left find the anti-nuclear power sentiment. A troublesom matter of faith not reason.
So things like the Tesla would seem an obvious way out of this mess. It provides a market based solution, creates jobs, and generally ticks all the boxes that the libertarians want ticked, without forcing them to share the same podium with the creationists and "smoking DOESNT cause cancer!" whackjobs by reluctantly feining a belief that scientists are in some 100 year old sinister global conspiracy to lie about physics for some undeteriminable reason.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
The dealership model is more or less like a Union Closed Shop. "if you don't play by our rules, I'll take the ball away" - makes a mockery of a free and open internal market.
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
This is what is really holding back solar. Nobody's developed a storage tech that approaches the energy density of petroleum products. When that happens (and it gets mature enough to be cost-effective) then we'll really see some serious shit.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
it can only be a good thing. Fuck the car dealer paradigm, the need for such protectionist nonsense went away decades ago. Now the laws just make it profitable for dealers to rip off everyone as much as they can, because they have a monopoly on the supply. Yes, you could buy a Ford instead of a Honda, or buy from Joe's Honda instead of Fred's Honda down the road.. but they're all just as bad as the others. They don't have any incentive to change under the current system. If I could buy a car without dealing with dealership sleaze I would gladly pay another couple thousand dollars. And before all of you start telling me how I'm stupid for negotiating or not buying through a service, remember that ultimately you're signing a contract in a showroom of a dealership, and therefore they have at least one chance at making the entire process miserable in the effort to make a few more dollars.
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
No, the government doesn't decide how many car dealerships for a manufacturer there are in a region. That's between the manufacturer and the dealers.
"The widespread franchise rules giving car dealers virtual monopolies in their territories epitomize the government-controlled marketplace Republicans purportedly despise". No. The regulation we're talking about here is whether or not car dealers can ban direct manufacturer-to-consumer sales. There is no government regulation of which I'm aware on geographical monopoly areas for dealerships.
In states that ban direct sales of cars to consumers there's an enforced oligopoly of dealers for new cars. It is nothing close to a monopoly. There is a distinct difference.
Troll, hehe. was my description inaccurate?
See, "evil giant corp", by the way, let's limit the amount any one corp can donate. Wut? Each dealer counts as a corp so we can get more from them? Gosh, what a coincidence.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Play with the cost to run a car on gas vs electric. There are several calculators out there, including one on tesla's site where you can adjust milage on the gas car, miles driven, cost of electricity, cost of gas. .
This is my argument:
It cost less to use electric. Someone will make less money if we were to switch from gas to electric. I'm guessing that someone will be an oil company, even if an oil company supplying natural gas to the electric company.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
You must be new around here...
How'd you know? :)
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
GM lost money on cars and made it on financing.
Dealers lost money on cars and made it on service.
Electric = no maintenance = dealer veto
Most US sectors would know a free market if it bitch slapped them .
Kind of ironic that you would label me as "dumb" when you can't seem to comprehend my simple response to the parent. I merely corrected what was stated as an incorrect fact. Nowhere did I express my opinion nor state this incident was acceptable. You go on to say "Christie's actions", which at this point is libelous and ignorant. Despite 3 investigations, testimony, thousands of documents and months of time, not a single piece of evidence has shown that he knew or had anything to do with this. There is evidence of 3 people involved, 2 of which worked for Christie and do not anymore (one resigned and one was fired). As for my opinion... I do not find this incident acceptable and if crimes were proven to be committed, the people who committed them should be punished. So far Christie is not one of those people.
People who say "money does not buy happiness" are just people without money trying to make themselves feel better.
There is some truth in that, but you also have to be weary of their accounting. Its full of dirty tricks, where they can make a massive profit look like a loss. Sometimes in reporting the profits along the pipeline, they only talk about the profits of one part of their company. The crude oil department may only make .25 cents, but the refinery also makes .25 cents, the delivery division makes .25 cents, the retail gas station company makes .25 and so on.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
both of which based their economies on slave labor...
I'm told the name of that is called hollywood accounting.
There is the chance that profits were burried somewhere but i think the numbers came from their SEC filings which doesn't allow too many shenanigans else they get hit with the regulatory bat and sent to pita prison. Of course like with worldcom and tyco, they have to be caught first.
No I am saying they have been turned into a jobs machine by congress simply as a change in focus and allocation of spending. I agree they have no peer.