So GM was getting all that support to stay in business PLUS fantastic breaks on future profits and STILL needed a handout for the Volt? Ridiculous. So much for the free market.
Only the P85D has a smaller front motor - and small-er doesn't mean small. It's 221 HP - I've driven V6 pickup trucks that didn't have as much power. And I doubt that Tesla is stocking multiple sizes of motors, they may have only 1 or 2 and may be software-limiting the output ( or through the inverter?)
Tesla's footprint extends well beyond the Fremont factory. They are a major consumer of lithium batteries and that will take a big jump once the Model X starts shipping and even more so with the PowerWall. With the rapid build-out of Supercharger stations, there are a bunch of electrical jobs that would be impacted if they went away. Already 440 stations with a total of ~2400 chargers and expected to increase by 50% by 2017. They also use quite a bit of aluminum but probably not enough to have a noticeable impact global demand. As it stands, if Tesla collapsed, the ripples would extend to SpaceX and possibly Solar City - and, more importantly, the stock market. In that arena, Tesla is 50% the size of GM, not 0.03%. Grossly overvalued but it is what it is.
The original law dates back to '96 and has been amended several times. Have a look also at section 280F.
The text you linked to now has specific language regarding SUVs - see (5) Limitation on cost taken into account for certain passenger vehicles
But I don't know when that was introduced.
In any case this was a small part of a huge tax break bill that Dubya & the GOP used as lube for handjobbing the nation around the same time they launched the Iraq War, a fiasco that will haunt America more profoundly than Vietnam.
The containment building was incomplete at the time of the attack and was hit by only 2 rockets - FOUR years before the reactor went online. Given the attack and the importance of the safety of any nuclear reactor, especially a prototype, then if the explosions really did contribute to the later snowfall damage, the French get a very big FAIL on this one.
A general tax break that originally specifically states a vehicle weight of 6000 pounds fully loaded? What's "general" is that no effort was made to prevent abuse of a legal provision that was , ahem, "specifically" intended for self-employed people who need actual trucks or heavy vehicles as part of the normal course of business.
How a chiropractor in a Hummer or a dentist in a Navigator fits that bill is, to be fair, a bit curious. And the tax break have been increased in the 3 years previous, rising to $25k in 2001 - 2002 when a pre-election "decision" was made to triple it.
You're behind the curve on Tesla. Dual-motor AWD models were announced in October 2014 and have been shipping since January.
There are now 4 Model S available, 3 of which have a motor on both front & rear axles and can act independently. Tesla is considering a over-the-air software update to put the rear motor to sleep when cruising at constant speed and you can lose either the front or rear drive unit and keep on driving.
Perhaps Tesla will be yet another failed automaker - there have been no shortage of those in the past century. I wonder if they'll get as generous a package as Government Motors did when they needed rescuing? http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...
Getting a free pass on $45 billion in future profits is a pretty sweet deal.
Worse than that, they crushed them all, except for a couple that ended up in museums.
Toyota, at least, allowed most of the customers of the original RAV4 EV to keep theirs - and most are still on the road, some with some serious miles on the odometer.
Let me know when the answer is clear - it's been 7 years since that article.
What's not in dispute is that Tesla has made a car that has lots of otherwise disinterested folks talking about an American car. Bavaria gave zero shits or fucks for anything that coming out of Detroit but are scrambling to have several "Tesla-killers" in showrooms in the next few years.
For the money lent to Tesla, the government got an expensive cool car that's already been upgraded significantly a couple times, that can lose an entire drive unit and keep on going, the fastest charging stations in the world with the smallest connector, a soon-to-be-released SUV that performs like a sports car, a battery plant whose construction is well underway that should double global production of EV battery packs, and the promise of a $35k EV sedan with a range of 200 miles.
For the investment in GM, they got the Volt.
And let's not forget that Nissan is the global sales champ for BEVs. Who paid for development of the Leaf, Kangoo, Twizy & Zoe?
I never said it was still in effect. In fact, I didn't know until today that it had been reactivated in 2011. But during the Bush years, it applied to domestic vehicles over 6000 lbs and it didn't matter what was your "industry". Also, there was no stipulation on how long you kept the vehicle and while you couldn't sell it without have to pay back part of the subsidy, you could make a trade in at any time.
I'm betting more than a few made a trade-in within a couple years, probably for more than one vehicle, too.
And what would have happened if they had? Yeah, thought so.
FYI, bringing up Superphenix probably wasn't a good idea on your part. As nuke plants go, that one sucked rotten donkey balls, RPG attack notwithstanding
Designed electrical power output was 1.20 GW, though year to year its availability was from zero to 33%. As time passed, problems developed from another source: the liquid sodium cooling system suffered from corrosion and leaks. These problems were eventually fixed and in December 1996 the power reached 90% of the nominal power.[8] In December 1990 structural damage occurred following heavy snowfall. Power production did not resume until the Direction de la sûreté des installations nucléaires approved it in 1992. [9] The plant was connected to EDF grid in December 1994 and produced 4 300 GWh of electricity, worth about a billion 1995 Franc, during the next 10 months of operation. In 1996 it produced 3 400 GWh worth about 850 million Francs.[8] In September 1998, the plant was closed. Two incidents earlier in the year had culminated in a third, which triggered an automatic shutdown. During 11 years, the plant spent 63 months of normal operations, mostly at low power; 25 months of outages due to fixing technical problems of the prototype; and 66 months were spent on halt due to political and administrative issues
If you read nothing else in the quoted section above, digest this: structural damage following heavy SNOWFALL shut the plant for MORE THAN A YEAR.
I was being slightly facetious. My point was that 2 Jap automakers didn't have a problem making a hybrid a decade & a half prior; no gov't subsidy needed. So why one for GM? Toyota really missed the boat, despite the relatively good sales of the Prius. Had they more aggressively pursued electrification, there could have been plug-in Priuses & Volt or Leaf competitors before either of those got off the drawing board.
Excerpt - "Thanks to a generous tax credit, Karl Wizinsky is driving a very large vehicle these days — a 2002 Ford Excursion.
"It doesn't hurt to have a larger vehicle, but I wouldn't say it's a requirement of my business," he said on a cell phone while driving the Excursion. "But I ended up saving $32,000."
This year, the perks of buying a large SUV — if you're a small business owner — got even bigger.
Congress recently passed a tax bill, as proposed in President Bush's economic stimulus plan, that offers a $100,000 tax credit for business owners who purchase any vehicle weighing 6,000 pounds or more when fully loaded.
When Wizinsky's accountant told him about the credit last year, the amount was much less, at $75,000, but it was enough to encourage Wizinsky to trade in his Mercury Marquis for the Excursion.
"It sounded too good to be true," said Wizinsky, a health care consultant in Novi, Mich. "But it was true. So I bought the SUV. For a small company like mine it's a significant credit."
Hybrid Earns Smaller Break
Meanwhile, legislation that offers a much smaller tax break — a $2,000 tax deduction — to those who purchase fuel-efficient hybrid cars is on track to be phased out. Congress is considering legislation that would extend the tax deduction to encourage consumers to buy the hybrid cars, but the status of the bill remains uncertain."
And the fiscally responsible GOP made a similar provision a requirement for Obama to get a deal through in 2011 - http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...
There's been "environmentalist propaganda" against coal plants for a long time yet it's only in the last 7 years that some of the nastiest units in the USA have been installing scrubbers to cleaup up their crap.
The greenies have been railing against coal's death toll, ecosystem damage, groundwater contamination, mercury emissions, destruction caused by mountaintop removal for decades.
3 Mile Island cost a pretty large fortune in cleanup but it didn't cause a mass closure of reactors like Fukushima.
Not all subsidies are geared towards lower GHGs emissions. During the Bush years, you could get a SUV subsidy for your "business" that could reduce your federal tax burden by $30,000. More than a few doctors bought Hummers.
GM has never built a vehicle like the Volt before
Then instead of turning hat-in-hand to the government, they should have asked Toyota or Honda for help ( I won't say "insight":-) ) as they managed the feat a almost 15 years prior.
Certainly not me. A friend of mine who ran a painting business in the 80s had to put down a $1100 deposit and had to wear a battery pack in a hip holtster. I forget the monthly cost but it was substantial.
"So now a chiropractor in Sausalito can buy a top of the line Hummer for that $102,581 and then claim a $75,000 deduction for capital equipment, an $8,274 post-Sep. 11 bonus capital equipment deduction and a first-year depreciation allowance of $3,861. The total deduction: $87,135. Assuming the driver is in the top income bracket, the federal tax savings for buying a Hummer is $33,634."
How much did you spend in parts & repairs on the Chevette? How much for gas & oil? In a couple years, you'll be able to get a pure EV for ~$35,000 that'll give you 200 miles EPA. There's always someone who thinks they need more than X but a huge number of people are just fine with , I tell them they should have bought a Land Rover or a Humvee instead.
But why does the Volt need a subsidy at all? It's a GM car - a company that has made hundreds of millions of autos in all shapes in sizes, including the all-electric EV1. The Model S is the FIRST car Tesla has built from scratch and had to learn every bit of the auto business, including supply chain management.
Does GM still need help with that, after all these decades?
Thanks to the early adopters who upgraded to the newer dual-motor models, there's now a significant supply of 2ndhand Model S with only ~5000 - 20000 miles available and with more to come, the prices will fall even more. I suspect quite a few will sell their Model S to buy a Model X. The Model 3 is still a ways off but the GM Bolt is only a year away - a car that is intended to beat the Model 3 to the punch.
Between that, the Gigafactory, the Powerwall and the SolarCity / Silevo expansion, the consumer appetite for affordable EVs that have "enough" range is being whetted almost entirely by Telsa and everyone else is merely trying to capitalize on that pent-up demand.
Slashdot Mirror
So GM was getting all that support to stay in business PLUS fantastic breaks on future profits and STILL needed a handout for the Volt? Ridiculous.
So much for the free market.
Only the P85D has a smaller front motor - and small-er doesn't mean small.
It's 221 HP - I've driven V6 pickup trucks that didn't have as much power.
And I doubt that Tesla is stocking multiple sizes of motors, they may have only 1 or 2 and may be software-limiting the output ( or through the inverter?)
Tesla's footprint extends well beyond the Fremont factory. They are a major consumer of lithium batteries and that will take a big jump once the Model X starts shipping and even more so with the PowerWall.
With the rapid build-out of Supercharger stations, there are a bunch of electrical jobs that would be impacted if they went away. Already 440 stations with a total of ~2400 chargers and expected to increase by 50% by 2017.
They also use quite a bit of aluminum but probably not enough to have a noticeable impact global demand.
As it stands, if Tesla collapsed, the ripples would extend to SpaceX and possibly Solar City - and, more importantly, the stock market.
In that arena, Tesla is 50% the size of GM, not 0.03%. Grossly overvalued but it is what it is.
The original law dates back to '96 and has been amended several times.
Have a look also at section 280F.
The text you linked to now has specific language regarding SUVs - see (5) Limitation on cost taken into account for certain passenger vehicles
But I don't know when that was introduced.
In any case this was a small part of a huge tax break bill that Dubya & the GOP used as lube for handjobbing the nation around the same time they launched the Iraq War, a fiasco that will haunt America more profoundly than Vietnam.
.
The containment building was incomplete at the time of the attack and was hit by only 2 rockets - FOUR years before the reactor went online.
Given the attack and the importance of the safety of any nuclear reactor, especially a prototype, then if the explosions really did contribute to the later snowfall damage, the French get a very big FAIL on this one.
"Buy a Hummer and they assume no person in their right mind would use if for personal use"
Any person in their right mind who's lived in America since the mid-80s would never make such a statement with a straight face.
A general tax break that originally specifically states a vehicle weight of 6000 pounds fully loaded?
What's "general" is that no effort was made to prevent abuse of a legal provision that was , ahem, "specifically" intended for self-employed people who need actual trucks or heavy vehicles as part of the normal course of business.
How a chiropractor in a Hummer or a dentist in a Navigator fits that bill is, to be fair, a bit curious.
And the tax break have been increased in the 3 years previous, rising to $25k in 2001 - 2002 when a pre-election "decision" was made to triple it.
You're behind the curve on Tesla. Dual-motor AWD models were announced in October 2014 and have been shipping since January.
There are now 4 Model S available, 3 of which have a motor on both front & rear axles and can act independently. Tesla is considering a over-the-air software update to put the rear motor to sleep when cruising at constant speed and you can lose either the front or rear drive unit and keep on driving.
Perhaps Tesla will be yet another failed automaker - there have been no shortage of those in the past century. I wonder if they'll get as generous a package as Government Motors did when they needed rescuing?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB...
Getting a free pass on $45 billion in future profits is a pretty sweet deal.
Worse than that, they crushed them all, except for a couple that ended up in museums.
Toyota, at least, allowed most of the customers of the original RAV4 EV to keep theirs - and most are still on the road, some with some serious miles on the odometer.
http://evnut.com/rav_owner_100...
.
Let me know when the answer is clear - it's been 7 years since that article.
What's not in dispute is that Tesla has made a car that has lots of otherwise disinterested folks talking about an American car. Bavaria gave zero shits or fucks for anything that coming out of Detroit but are scrambling to have several "Tesla-killers" in showrooms in the next few years.
For the money lent to Tesla, the government got an expensive cool car that's already been upgraded significantly a couple times, that can lose an entire drive unit and keep on going, the fastest charging stations in the world with the smallest connector, a soon-to-be-released SUV that performs like a sports car, a battery plant whose construction is well underway that should double global production of EV battery packs, and the promise of a $35k EV sedan with a range of 200 miles.
For the investment in GM, they got the Volt.
And let's not forget that Nissan is the global sales champ for BEVs. Who paid for development of the Leaf, Kangoo, Twizy & Zoe?
I never said it was still in effect. In fact, I didn't know until today that it had been reactivated in 2011.
But during the Bush years, it applied to domestic vehicles over 6000 lbs and it didn't matter what was your "industry".
Also, there was no stipulation on how long you kept the vehicle and while you couldn't sell it without have to pay back part of the subsidy, you could make a trade in at any time.
I'm betting more than a few made a trade-in within a couple years, probably for more than one vehicle, too.
Not for its R&D
By the time those subsidies were available, it had been on the market for 7 years and was a couple years into its 2nd gen model.
And what would have happened if they had? Yeah, thought so.
FYI, bringing up Superphenix probably wasn't a good idea on your part. As nuke plants go, that one sucked rotten donkey balls, RPG attack notwithstanding
Designed electrical power output was 1.20 GW, though year to year its availability was from zero to 33%. As time passed, problems developed from another source: the liquid sodium cooling system suffered from corrosion and leaks. These problems were eventually fixed and in December 1996 the power reached 90% of the nominal power.[8]
In December 1990 structural damage occurred following heavy snowfall. Power production did not resume until the Direction de la sûreté des installations nucléaires approved it in 1992. [9]
The plant was connected to EDF grid in December 1994 and produced 4 300 GWh of electricity, worth about a billion 1995 Franc, during the next 10 months of operation. In 1996 it produced 3 400 GWh worth about 850 million Francs.[8]
In September 1998, the plant was closed. Two incidents earlier in the year had culminated in a third, which triggered an automatic shutdown.
During 11 years, the plant spent 63 months of normal operations, mostly at low power; 25 months of outages due to fixing technical problems of the prototype; and 66 months were spent on halt due to political and administrative issues
If you read nothing else in the quoted section above, digest this: structural damage following heavy SNOWFALL shut the plant for MORE THAN A YEAR.
they should have asked Toyota or Honda for help
Toyota and Honda would have helped them why?
I was being slightly facetious. My point was that 2 Jap automakers didn't have a problem making a hybrid a decade & a half prior; no gov't subsidy needed.
So why one for GM?
Toyota really missed the boat, despite the relatively good sales of the Prius. Had they more aggressively pursued electrification, there could have been plug-in Priuses & Volt or Leaf competitors before either of those got off the drawing board.
Here you go: http://abcnews.go.com/Technolo...
Excerpt - "Thanks to a generous tax credit, Karl Wizinsky is driving a very large vehicle these days — a 2002 Ford Excursion.
"It doesn't hurt to have a larger vehicle, but I wouldn't say it's a requirement of my business," he said on a cell phone while driving the Excursion. "But I ended up saving $32,000."
This year, the perks of buying a large SUV — if you're a small business owner — got even bigger.
Congress recently passed a tax bill, as proposed in President Bush's economic stimulus plan, that offers a $100,000 tax credit for business owners who purchase any vehicle weighing 6,000 pounds or more when fully loaded.
When Wizinsky's accountant told him about the credit last year, the amount was much less, at $75,000, but it was enough to encourage Wizinsky to trade in his Mercury Marquis for the Excursion.
"It sounded too good to be true," said Wizinsky, a health care consultant in Novi, Mich. "But it was true. So I bought the SUV. For a small company like mine it's a significant credit."
Hybrid Earns Smaller Break
Meanwhile, legislation that offers a much smaller tax break — a $2,000 tax deduction — to those who purchase fuel-efficient hybrid cars is on track to be phased out. Congress is considering legislation that would extend the tax deduction to encourage consumers to buy the hybrid cars, but the status of the bill remains uncertain."
And the fiscally responsible GOP made a similar provision a requirement for Obama to get a deal through in 2011 - http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...
There's been "environmentalist propaganda" against coal plants for a long time yet it's only in the last 7 years that some of the nastiest units in the USA have been installing scrubbers to cleaup up their crap.
The greenies have been railing against coal's death toll, ecosystem damage, groundwater contamination, mercury emissions, destruction caused by mountaintop removal for decades.
3 Mile Island cost a pretty large fortune in cleanup but it didn't cause a mass closure of reactors like Fukushima.
Not all subsidies are geared towards lower GHGs emissions.
During the Bush years, you could get a SUV subsidy for your "business" that could reduce your federal tax burden by $30,000.
More than a few doctors bought Hummers.
GM has never built a vehicle like the Volt before
Then instead of turning hat-in-hand to the government, they should have asked Toyota or Honda for help ( I won't say "insight" :-) ) as they managed the feat a almost 15 years prior.
Certainly not me. A friend of mine who ran a painting business in the 80s had to put down a $1100 deposit and had to wear a battery pack in a hip holtster.
I forget the monthly cost but it was substantial.
Are these the same people who opposed Bush's SUV subsidy that meant you could get discount Hummers?
Or is this a different group of subsidy-haters?
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/th...
"So now a chiropractor in Sausalito can buy a top of the line Hummer for that $102,581 and then claim a $75,000 deduction for capital equipment, an $8,274 post-Sep. 11 bonus capital equipment deduction and a first-year depreciation allowance of $3,861. The total deduction: $87,135. Assuming the driver is in the top income bracket, the federal tax savings for buying a Hummer is $33,634."
How much did you spend in parts & repairs on the Chevette? How much for gas & oil?
In a couple years, you'll be able to get a pure EV for ~$35,000 that'll give you 200 miles EPA.
There's always someone who thinks they need more than X but a huge number of people are just fine with , I tell them they should have bought a Land Rover or a Humvee instead.
The rightwing will never support that kind of "wealth redistribution"
The "environmentalists" didn't kill the nuke industry - it did itself in a long time ago.
http://articles.philly.com/198...
But why does the Volt need a subsidy at all?
It's a GM car - a company that has made hundreds of millions of autos in all shapes in sizes, including the all-electric EV1.
The Model S is the FIRST car Tesla has built from scratch and had to learn every bit of the auto business, including supply chain management.
Does GM still need help with that, after all these decades?
Hawaii, Australia and Germany are already at the point where the PowerWall or something like it will pay back before the warrany expires.
Thanks to the early adopters who upgraded to the newer dual-motor models, there's now a significant supply of 2ndhand Model S with only ~5000 - 20000 miles available and with more to come, the prices will fall even more.
I suspect quite a few will sell their Model S to buy a Model X. The Model 3 is still a ways off but the GM Bolt is only a year away - a car that is intended to beat the Model 3 to the punch.
Between that, the Gigafactory, the Powerwall and the SolarCity / Silevo expansion, the consumer appetite for affordable EVs that have "enough" range is being whetted almost entirely by Telsa and everyone else is merely trying to capitalize on that pent-up demand.
Who bailed out Joe Homeowner? The crisis wasn't 100% his fault either but he and millions of his neighbors got foreclosed.
Exactly!