You might be shocked how many people with money are complete idiots (no offense to anyone on this thread) that got lucky either by birth or just good luck. Not all are of course, but I've met plenty of rich idiots. Some of them unwittingly help provide me income to buy my F-Type

 

Having money doesn't even necessary means that one is good at getting money.

 

I think this is very complex system that you are trying to shoehorn into a small metric box. I quoted the tax % numbers intentionally - there is absolutely no pattern to tax levels and stable governance. Some successful countries tax a lot, some tax a little and the same holds true for failed countries.

Sure, 0% and 100% tax rates could not possibly work. Anything in-between can, and there is no reason to suggest that less taxes are good for business (trickle down) or more taxes is good for population (cradle to grave social state).

 

I agree that the discussion is nuanced, but I'm arguing against someone who said that all taxation is theft. If all taxation is theft then a 0% tax rate is the only moral option. Obviously this doesn't work, which is the point I'm making.

 

Bringing this slightly back on topic, it is true Tesla (and most other electric cars) are indirectly subsidized by a $7500 rebate to the consumer, but Tesla also benefits from ZEV credits it earns by selling zero emissions vehicles. California and 9 other states have the requirement that a certain percentage of a manufacters fleet be ZEV. A recent Forbes article suggests that Tesla, which earns tons of ZEV credits, has been able to sell these credits (to other manufacturers who do not have ZEV's in their fleet) for an estimated $700 million over the past several years.

Are the customer subsidy and ZEV credits scams? I would suggest they are govt policies designed to encourage the development and adoption of electric vehicles. If Musk is clever enough to design a business that can take full advantage of these offers, is that wrong? Aren't they available to all manufacturers - why are there not more takers?

As they say, hate the game, not the player...

 

Agreed.
Musk is just playing the game, and playing it very well.
The game being "emissions" (of CO2) and climate change (AKA global warming) nearly all of which is total BS.
It really irks me that "the game" in this case is the greatest fraud in history, several trillion $ worth.

 

I'd laugh if what you just said wasn't so tragic. The denial of man-made global warming is one of the things that's going to hasten our extinction.

 

Kudos to those leveraging incentives but remember that many/most of those "incentives" are going away and FAST! The rules state that the first 200,000 Tesla's qualify but that means EVERY Tesla including the original roadsters so... most of the people who are in the queue for the the Tesla 3 won't qualify for the subsidies as that allocation will run out. The incentives for Toyota ran through their 200K cars a good while back.

 

Um, Isn't this a forum where we are driving supercharged V-6 and V-8 two-seaters?

No offense, but this isn't a Prius forum, don't see how you can drive what we do and say you are certain man made activity leads to global warming. Just saying....

 

I purchase carbon offsets and donate significant amounts of money to other environmental causes. My desire to own a car with a big engine doesn't reduce my ability to understand science. If I didn't make other environmentally conscious choices (though I'm certainly not perfect) I wouldn't own this car.

 

It is man made, and my F-type contributes. When the issue becomes bad enough, humanity will have a technological solution. It is likely ICE will become heavily taxed or illegal at that point. Or we do nothing and our society collapses due to famines, floods, droughts and other adverse extreme events. Until then, I will enjoy my F-type.

Denying science is

 

I think you are reading too literally into this and is not sufficiently charitable in your interpretation. I understand "taxation is theft" position as "We should strive to reduce taxation, as forced redistribution is morally dubious".

 

That's possible. It's also possible that the person who made the "taxation is theft" argument is a true anarcho-capitalist. I've seen more and more of those over the last few years. Without clarification from him/her we can't know.

 

Gonna un-melt those glaciers?

Funny how folks seem to be either all in or they are science deniers. As a radical moderate, I see where man made causes could be contributing to global warming, but don't think anyone could possibly know to what extent. However after traveling much of the world and seeing extensive use of open wood fires, extreme overpopulation, coal and other dirty energy and heavy pollution from unregulated manufacturing, I don't worry about what my F type contributes. At the other end of the spectrum, I feel like California with its back packs for cow farts has gone bonkers trying to justify expensive lifestyle changes that will be pointless until the developing countries do their part.

Going back to the original post, the Tesla roadster appeals to me mostly due to its extreme performance, and the fact that I can plug it into my govt subsidized, hugely inefficient, solar panels on my roof is a plus. If it cools the planet, even better.

 

But Musk can land a space capsule on a barge. That's pretty cool.


As for his Tesla go fast car...No sound. I must have the sound of the supercharged Jag 3.0. Tesla can't touch the looks.


I'm not looking to ride around with 3 passengers going 250 mph.


Techno shmeshno. But then I don't even have a cell phone...

 

There is a certain amount of exaggeration about some of this stuff.
I believe he founded zip2 with his brother, mainly funded by venture capital, sold to Compaq for $302 million not too long before dot com crash. Was probably overvalued and Musk got $22 million out of the sale . Zip2 isn't around anymore
Paypal was created by Confinity which merged with x.com, the latter founded by Musk .
Tesla was founded in 2003 by two individuals, neither of whom was Musk although he did become involved later.
Tesla may become successful, but so far it's mainly hype, they sold just over 2200 roadsters in four years! Hardly mass market manufacturer yet.
In 2016 Musk forecasted sales of Model 3 eould total 100,000 in 2017.
I believe just over 200 (two hundred) have been delivered!
Tesla has had numerous well documented injections of vast sums of venture capital, avoiding bankruptcy on occasions.
The expansion of facilities and building new factories hasn't ever been funded from profits as the company has rarely generated any significant profits. It's market capitalisation did exceed Ford and GM earlier this year for a short while but there's no comparison in terms of volume of production or sales turnover let alone profitability.
Indeed whilst money has been put into the company by several high profile investors there are many respected business analysts that state quite accurately that if you look at the numbers it doesn't add up and but for the current cult of "Elon Musk" the business likely wouldn't have been funded to the current extent.

I guess there are many of us on here who are old enough to remember the hype that surrounded the dot com boom and subsequent crash. Many companies that appeared to have high value were found to be overvalued and not have a very sound business model.

Is Elon Musk good at generating publicity and funding, definitely, will he turn Tesla into a mass market e vehicle company that has profits to match the hype ?
Probably too soon to tell.

 

Wait, so driving a car that pollutes means I can not believe in climate change?

 

The market cap is ridiculous, but that's where investors are putting their money. The 60 million he lost last year is his own money, profits from other businesses, right? Investors who choose to gamble on him are making their own decision.

I was there... To be fair the vast majority of those companies produced nothing tangible but hype, right?


Yep we will find out. Some businesses fail. Some are successful. He's investing his own money and that of people who gamble on him to find out. Without that, I don't think this experiment would be happening.

 

Its my understanding Musk is utilizing lots of tax payer dollars as well... anyway, gotta love these F type cars.. beauty and soul.
Lawrence

 

The wife offsets my carbon emissions as she drives a hybrid in and out of the city for work. I actually work from home so don't commute and I have a diesel X5 for long trips. The emissions coming out of the tailpipe on it is less than it would be for a petrol engine and diesel fuel requires less refining during manufacture so I am polluting less than those that drive petrol engines 100% of the time. The F-Type is for playing so on the weekends in the immortal words of David Farragut... "Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!"