Govt Picks a Winner: Tesla Gets $465 Million
Steven Chu this morning finally puts the nail in the coffin of the congressional No We Can’t contingent’s stance. For the last 8 years they’ve been saying that “government can’t pick winners and losers”, by which they simply meant keep all the current lavish oil subsidies in place and don’t make any changes in energy policy that might develop a competitor.
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The Japanese government had no such qualms when they saw a winner in the developing Prius, back in the 90’s. They boldly subsidized Toyota’s first Prius by paying for a sizable portion of the early models. So if you drive a hybrid, you have the Japanese government’s willingness to pick a winner early on to thank for the extra pennies in your pocket, even if your hybrid is not a Prius. Because the followers certainly would not have followed without that first government money enabling hybrid development.
If you have ever had a manufacturing business as I have, you understand how expensive the first of any new prototype is to develop, especially innovative new products, and it is no measure of what EVs are likely to cost to manufacture once they are routinely rolling off assembly lines en masse.
So picking winners to invest in on behalf of the public good does make sense. At least initially they need that government support.
Now it looks as if our own government is getting as smart as the Japanese government was back in the ’90’s. Kudos to our new DOE. Today, I’m proud to be an American!
Details on page 2:
Tesla MODEL S with 300 miles range RULES !
An interesting look at this is on http://www.triplepundit.com
Chalk one up for sanity!
“The all-electric sedan consumes no gasoline and runs entirely on electricity from any conventional 120V or 220V outlet. It will get the equivalent of more than 250 miles per gallon, far exceeding the 32.7 mpg minimum efficiency required for large sedans.”
What can I ask more than that ! 250 miles per gallon !
ELECTRIC RULES NOW !
[...] Govt Picks a Winner: Tesla Gets $465 Million June 24th, 2009 Goto comments Leave a comment Hello there! If you are new here, you might want to subscribe to the RSS feed for updates on this topic. Steven Chu this morning finally puts the nail in the coffin of the congressional No We Can’t contingent’s stance. For the last 8 years they’ve been saying that “government can’t pick winners and losers”, by which they simply meant keep all the current lavish oil subsidies in place and don’t make any changes in energy policy that might develop a competitor. Read more of this story » [...]
How is this even slightly intelligent. Who on earth is going to be able to afford one? They’re getting all this money, but they sell luxury electric cars that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fun as it may seem, it’s not practical and isn’t going to positively impact the average American’s life at all, it’s only going to raise their taxes so the rich can buy these luxury vehicles. C’mon… think it through. It’s ridiculous. The Hybrid Hummer would have been a better investment than a two passenger luxury car maker. Americans have families and budgets and have to go shopping for groceries. This makes no sense at all.
This sounds good, but I find myself wondering if Obama and congress have yet determined that a “sound business practices DO NOT include government subsidies and DO require a profit.
THIS SURE LOOKS LIKE A GOVERNMENT SUBSIDY TO ME.
“These loans – and the additional support we will provide through the Section 136 program – will create good jobs and help the auto industry to meet and even exceed the tough fuel economy standards we’ve set, while helping us to regain our competitive edge in the world market.”
It costs more to make the first of any entirely new invention Mort.
This will help it become more affordable faster.
Anyone who thinks Japan is a good model to follow needs to read this:
http://reason.com/blog/show/134295.html
I’m with Shorty Mort. As much as I love cars and especially the concept of electric cars, Tesla has not shown me that they deserve taxpayer support. Many reports have come out about internal strife at Tesla and severe cost overruns. Tesla is still a struggling start-up and it’s hard for me to understand why they deserve this money unless the decision is based largely on a company’s ability to generate PR and buzz for electric cars. I imagine there are many, many other electric car experimenters/developers who would have loved to had access to this money.
ON THE OTHER HAND — we’re throwing billions at banks, airlines, farmers and car companies, $465 million now sounds like pennies!
But seriously, as Mort wrote, giving millions of precious taxpayer dollars to Tesla to produce $50,000 luxury cars just doesn’t make sense to me.
Michael