Trump team puts EV tax credit on the block, Tesla is on board: Report

Elon Musk is on record as saying it would hurt competitors more than Tesla.

See full article...

 

[Iconoclysm]

Musk has said enough times that he wants the subsidies/tax credits removed. Tesla is the largest automaker, and sells the most EV cars too. It stands to lose the most per se. Or not.

Anyhow, here in Ontario, Canada, we lost Provincial (State) rebate long back, and it has not stopped the EV adoption. Yes, it was slowed but by not much when you look at the market itself.

What's hurting the most I see for EV adoption are:
1) cost overall - At the price point you can get a decent EV in Ontario, it is like choosing between a premium car or an EV. Even a Hyundai Ioniq 5 costs $70K+ on the road, which on paper is a great vehicle but apparently in practice not so great with the battery - enough stories.

this was one of the reason for the Premier to remove the rebate - if you can afford to purchase a premium car then you don't really need rebate, that money can be used in other social services instead. And hopefully, the funds go somewhere useful instead of pockets.

2) insurance - goddamn this was a surprise and it was the major factor for me to consider something else - almost 2x the cost of ICE or plugins that are not considered high risk.

3) Choices - BEVs selection isn't that big that there are enough choices available for consumers to sort of check off enough "wants" boxes to justify the move, especially considering the above 2 points.

Anyhow, all this is going to achieve is slowdown the EV adoption - not great for environment.

Tesla is not the largest automaker by a huge margin. They have the largest market cap, they sell the most EV's.

 

[Purpleivan]

And in other news, The Onion just bought Infowars. This timeline is even weirder than the one with talking tentacled space visitors.

And Alex Jones is amusingly furious about it.

 

[Iconoclysm]

Why should EVs vehicles be subsided? Everything I've read here over the last few years is EVs are so far superior to ICE vehicles that you'd be a fool to not get in line today to purchase one. With that kind of overwhelming demand subsidies shouldn't needed to encourage their adoption. The has come to let the market decide their fate.

Why should oil be subsidized? Do you know what went into the adoption of cars 100 years ago? You can't simultaneously grow an industry and create the infrastructure, it's a chicken before the egg problem.

The global market has decided, the US is encouraging its citizens to not take us back to the stone ages...or they were.

 

[mmiller7]

The most corrupt administration in US history, and they haven't even been sworn in yet. Chucklefucks voted for this, we in the US deserve everything coming our way.

Not thrilled about it...my state went blue (yay) but we still gotta deal with his shit.

 

[GlockenspielHero]

.....because they are heavily subsidized by the Chinese government. Is it really that hard to understand?

Tesla has gotten something like $2.8B in direct government subsidies and tens of billions in indirect ones through the EV tax credit. Literally every dime of Tesla's profit has come from selling carbon credits to other companies.

This is kind of like Boeing whining about Airbus getting subsidies.

 

[kragg]

one of the bullet points from the campaign season that ended up falling into my nihilistic "nothing matters" bucket is the fact that independent analyses showed that Trump's proposals would amount to a tax hike for like 95% of americans and a massive tax cut for the top 5% or so. And yet through the election he got credit for kitchen-table cost of living and economy issues and was percieved as more moderate.

Media sane washing had a hand in this. Vote with your wallet.

 

[Iconoclysm]

Whats with everyone dropping the word "fascist" on everything these days? Please utilize a dictionary. Musk is a libertarian, thats like a complete 180 on the political spectrum.

Your definition of fascism is simply wrong. Go back to Mussolini and the creation of fascism. Rather than pit the poor against the rich, fascism pits the natives against the others. It goes hand in hand with libertarianism, especially the impure version of it we see today. Libertarians SHOULD be equally opposed to corporations controlling our lives but they've completely lost the thread of the ideology. There were and still are left wing libertarians...but both the left and right wing consider a "social libertarian" to be an oxymoron.

 

[nvemb3r]

Elon Musk, rent-seeking grifter, uses the government to kill the competition.

Because of course.

 

[JerryLove]

We are going to see a version of "privatization" - redistribution of the nation's wealth to the few oligarchs who kissed the ring and those who happened to be close to the center of power.

Perhaps an acceleration; but everything from outsourcing much of tax collection (The IRS was 5x as efficient as the companies that took over), to private prisons, to federal flood insurance (premiums go to the private companies, claims are paid by the federal government).... this has been happening and expanding for decades at this point.

 

[jamesb2147]

I know what they’re doing domestically, and none of it is good. That’s not really what I was responding to. The question was “Why would they stop?” and it was specifically in reference to seizing territory militarily.

I agree that they’re gonna go after Taiwan, and they may do it during the next four years. Are they going to invade Thailand? That seems unlikely to me, but who knows? Is there some faction in the Chinese government that wants to annex Indonesia? Are they massing troops and threatening North or South Korea? Do they want to overthrow the Philippines, or do they want the South China Sea? What territory do they want? What areas besides Taiwan and the South China Sea are they doing a Russian-style “this has always been our territory and we’re just gonna reclaim/liberate it” routine about? I said I don’t know, but it seems unlikely that they’re gearing up for ground invasions of their neighbors.

As for Windows? They’re ruled by a deeply isolationist, authoritarian, incredibly un-democratic regime that wants total control over their own populace and they’re worried about the free flow of information undermining their government. Why wouldn’t they want to get away from Windows? Why would them wanting to get away from Windows be a sign of a sinister plot to conquer the world and not just, y’know…them trying to lock their own people down even tighter?

The Windows thing is preparations for an invasion of Taiwan. They didn't start the process of stripping it out until after they watched Russia invade Ukraine and saw how that played out.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/05/asia/china-bhutan-border-dst-intl-hnk/index.html
^ Oh yes, they have such good relationships with their land border neighbors...

Do you have any actual basis for these opinions you've formed? Because I'm just not seeing it.

 

[JerryLove]

I'm sick of people asking this. It's literally the last two paragraphs of this not very long article.

Tesla was a major beneficiary of the new clean vehicle tax credit; under the previous scheme, an OEM was only eligible until it sold its 200,000th plug-in vehicle, at which point the credit available to its customers began to sunset. Tesla—which exclusively sells plug-in vehicles—was unsurprisingly the first to reach this threshold, at which point its EVs became more expensive than competitor cars. But the sales cap was eliminated under the new rules.

One might expect the company would be up in arms over this proposal. But according to Reuters, that's not the case—Tesla is in favor of ending the clean vehicle tax credit, and CEO Elon Musk has previously said such a move would be far more damaging to rival companies than to Tesla.

Tesla previously benefited from the tax credit during their ramp up. Now Musk believes it ending hurts competitors more than Tesla. It's not a hard concept to grasp.

The ramp up credit in your quote ended years ago. The article says as much. The tax credit being discussed now does not have a 200k limit on sales. Most Teslas sold in the US currently benefit from the tax credit.

A better answer from you (posited by another poster) would be that Tesla benefited during start-up and future start-ups would not benefit (though as you point out, it was a different credit then; but the point would be the same).

 

[masterpan]

Another classic case of "I got mine so now f*** you!".

In the same vein of how Netflix became anti-net neutrality as it got bigger and more profitable, Elon realizes that these EV credits help his struggling American competitors (Ford, GM, even Rivian) more than Tesla. He can't do much about Korean and Chinese already being price competitive regardless of credits so next best thing is to eliminate the other weaker rivals.

 

[ERIFNOMI]

There is something of a mind virus going on among solar customers which goes something like this: “I can’t possibly do the right thing, until I can make a profit by doing so.” You aren’t alone. Automakers feel the same way about EVs.

While reducing the solar/not solar decision to base economic profit/loss is a very cynical approach, it does ignore an antiquated concept of doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. Personally, unless it was going to cause big problems for the house or the site just wasn’t suitable for it, I’d just call the solar people and have them put it in. I’d get a home battery too.

You can wait. The grid is getting greener by the day. It is the one piece to the carbon economy which is actually on schedule to do the right thing. Transportation, agriculture, steel, concrete? Not so much. Grid solar is also something like 3x cheaper than rooftop. However it often takes up farmland.

I'm not worried about making money off of it. I have other things to do with the money, so there's an opportunity cost. I'd need a relatively large system, so it's pretty expensive, and I'd finance some of it. I fully intend on it "costing" me more per month than my electric bill because I don't like debt so I'm not going to hold a ridiculous 20 year loan for a nice-to-have project. I'm not searching for a scam to replace my electric bill with a solar panel loan.

Honestly the number one reason for doing it is personal: I'm a nerd and think it's cool. I want to make my own electricity. I want to tap into those statistics and that to my smart home. The second reason I think it would "the right thing" to do. The fact that eventually it will pay for itself is the just the financial justification for doing it, not so much the reason to do it. I pay fuck all for electricity, even with a plan that offsets my usage with renewable credits.

I'm going to revisit it next year, after confirming the next administration hasn't found a way to ratfuck their way out of honoring the solar tax credit. $10k is a nice chunk of change that I'm not willing to let a bunch of rich cunts take away from me just because they don't like the tech.

 

[Snark218]

And Alex Jones is amusingly furious about it.

May he stroke out while eating my shit and hair.

 

[LordSlinkySupreme]

This unfortunately plays into what I saw a lot of leading up to the election. Several people I know said "I'm tired of all these government handouts to everyone else. I don't want my tax dollars to help pay for my neighbor's electric car. His tax dollars didn't help pay for my (diesel) truck!"

This is exactly what they wanted: a reduction in taxes because they've got theirs and they don't want to give it away.

Except our tax dollars DO pay for the daily use of his stupid huge truck. I want my tax dollars to stop subsidizing oil prices to the times of hundreds of billions of dollars.

After all, I don’t want my tax dollars subsidizing some jackass’s F-150 garage queen.

 

[Iconoclysm]

The use of it three times in consecutive sentences should give a clue that it is being used as a slogan rather than as useful critique. The power of labelling in changing public opinion is well documented, and repetition is key.

Let's use the JD Vance approach here - If I have to use the word fascism over and over to get your attention that there's fascism going on, I'm going to.

 

[Iconoclysm]

He's always objected to these subsidies.

You can tell by reading the article.

Subsidies are generally a good thing but they always distort markets.

In 2008, he bet his entire company on acquiring a Department of Energy grant for $1 billion...and he acquired it in an almost dishonest way. Without that grant, Tesla would have certainly died. The entire foundation of the company, post-founder departures, was dependent on the government.

 

[papito10]

Perhaps an acceleration; but everything from outsourcing much of tax collection (The IRS was 5x as efficient as the companies that took over), to private prisons, to federal flood insurance (premiums go to the private companies, claims are paid by the federal government).... this has been happening and expanding for decades at this point.

You are not wrong, but all of this had to be done against occasional legal, regulatory, and legislative headwinds. Right now it's an open highway. The speed signs are gone, and the sheriff is drunk. It will be an acceleration, alright. They may or may not have the full four years, and they are well-aware. It will be a total rush to pillage and grab as much as possible.

No obstacles, no shame. I suggest everyone get ready if you want to to maintain your blood pressure at below-lethal levels.

 

[Longmile149]

I feel ya so much on this. I already turned off most of my News service Notifications. Stopped opening my News App or looking at headlines. It's gonna be real bad for my mental health so I am just gonna be very sparing with my exposure to any of it. And it's not even my country.

Thrown almost all my attention into other things. Planning a trip to Tokyo. Working on my YouTube channel. It's going to be rough, I am cushioning it however I can.

We’re calling it a return to our covid protocols. We’re trying to pare down as much as possible, focusing on the people and places we can touch and know personally. Basically, whatever and whoever is in arm’s reach or related to us.

 

[ERIFNOMI]

Tesla has pretty much used all the allotment of tax credits due to them. Unless they come out with a new model.

What? Teslas are eligible for the EV credit just like any other EV, as long as they meet the battery source material, final assembly, and MSRP cap requirements that all other EVs getting the credit must also meet (or you just lease to get around many of the requirements). The credit that was capped by number of vehicles sold ended years ago.

 

[heartburnkid]

Whats with everyone dropping the word "fascist" on everything these days? Please utilize a dictionary. Musk is a libertarian, thats like a complete 180 on the political spectrum.

If you believe that Musk is a libertarian, you have no idea what a libertarian is.

But that's OK, because most self-proclaimed libertarians in this country also have no idea what a libertarian is.

Musk is very much a fascist. The fact that he's wed himself to a fascist like Trump should make that obvious at this point, even if nothing else he's said would.

 

[Kergonath]

Everyone who voted in this election voted for genocide of the Palestinian people.

People who voted for Harris voted for a passive/indifferent, slow-moving genocide. People who voted for Trump voted for an active/deliberate, fast-moving genocide.

People who voted for Trump voted for the destruction of the Palestinian territories and the creation of "Greater Israel".

People who did not vote ended up voting for Trump. The problem with the American approach to the Middle East is with the US, not an individual politician. Though, of course, some are worse than others.

 

[daveishereagain]

I don't get this stance. It would make sense if Tesla were the dominant car manufacturer, and wanted to freeze the market the way it is. But only about 4% of US cars are Teslas right now. Increasing that number significantly requires growing the BEV market as a whole, and eliminating the $7500 tax credit seems damaging to that.

Musk has publicly stated Tesla isn't a car company but a tech developer. His recent moves internally at the company bear that out.
That said, what does anything Musk say make sense?
What does anyone at the new Trump administration say make sense?
The nation as we once knew it IS GONE.
Have a nice day.

 

[Kergonath]

If you believe that Musk is a libertarian, you have no idea what a libertarian is.

But that's OK, because most self-proclaimed libertarians in this country also have no idea what a libertarian is.

Musk is very much a fascist. The fact that he's wed himself to a fascist like Trump should make that obvious at this point, even if nothing else he's said would.

https://acoup.blog/2024/10/25/new-acquisitions-1933-and-the-definition-of-fascism/
This post is going to be relevant for quite a long time.

 

[daveishereagain]

If you believe that Musk is a libertarian, you have no idea what a libertarian is.

But that's OK, because most self-proclaimed libertarians in this country also have no idea what a libertarian is.

Musk is very much a fascist. The fact that he's wed himself to a fascist like Trump should make that obvious at this point, even if nothing else he's said would.

Oh, he's a fascist all right. He fills the definition in spades. And, yes, I'd say just about all people who call themselves 'libertarians' are full of shit. Libertarians don't want government telling people what they can and cannot do, be who they want to be, love who who they want to love, worship who they want or not worship at all.
Trump and his fascists calls themselves 'Freedom Lovers'. Yeah, free to persecute whom they deem worthy of persecution.
The Musk cult gives Musk a free pass and will give Trump and his pack of cretins a free pass since Musk is one of them.

 

[foobarian]

Me[rit]ocracy

Merde-ocracy

 

[Snark218]

Oh, he's a fascist all right. He fills the definition in spades. And, yes, I'd say just about all people who call themselves 'libertarians' are full of shit. Libertarians don't want government telling people what they can and cannot do, be who they want to be, love who who they want to love, worship who they want or not worship at all.
Trump and his fascists calls themselves 'Freedom Lovers'. Yeah, free to persecute whom they deem worthy of persecution.
The Musk cult gives Musk a free pass and will give Trump and his pack of cretins a free pass since musk is one of them.

They think freedom is "freedom to." They have no concept of "freedom from."

 

[Longmile149]

If the government never created these EV tax credits in the first place, no one here would be bickering about them.

And Tesla wouldn’t exist, SpaceX wouldn’t exist, Elon Musk would be just another forgotten millionaire failson, and Donald Trump might not be rolling in for a second crack at the end times.

…

Actually, I might be coming around on this “go back in time and kill the EV tax credit” idea.

 

[daveishereagain]

one of the bullet points from the campaign season that ended up falling into my nihilistic "nothing matters" bucket is the fact that independent analyses showed that Trump's proposals would amount to a tax hike for like 95% of americans and a massive tax cut for the top 5% or so. And yet through the election he got credit for kitchen-table cost of living and economy issues and was percieved as more moderate.

Many misinformed voters thought we were in a recession. Now, where would they get that idea? The strongest economy-by far- of the G7. Corporate media helped get Trump elected, but why wouldn't they? The propaganda works quite well for the fascists when the media are compliant.

 

[ranthog]

Stop fantasizing about a world where you have to smell other people on your way to and from places lol

Why do you go around sniffing people on the bus and train? That is really fucking creepy. You don't have to go up and sniff people to ride.

 

[Longmile149]

The Windows thing is preparations for an invasion of Taiwan. They didn't start the process of stripping it out until after they watched Russia invade Ukraine and saw how that played out.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/05/asia/china-bhutan-border-dst-intl-hnk/index.html
^ Oh yes, they have such good relationships with their land border neighbors...

Do you have any actual basis for these opinions you've formed? Because I'm just not seeing it.

Fair enough. I don’t follow the region terribly closely and I’m happy to defer to folks that do.

I don’t have any particular stake in my nebulous gut feels being right here.

 

[daveishereagain]

You are not wrong, but all of this had to be done against occasional legal, regulatory, and legislative headwinds. Right now it's an open highway. The speed signs are gone, and the sheriff is drunk. It will be an acceleration, alright. They may or may not have the full four years, and they are well-aware. It will be a total rush to pillage and grab as much as possible.

No obstacles, no shame. I suggest everyone get ready if you want to to maintain your blood pressure at below-lethal levels.

Well said, except the sheriff has joined the crooks. He may be drunk, but he is cool with what they do as long as his cut is acceptable.

 

[heartburnkid]

They think freedom is "freedom to." They have no concept of "freedom from."

Oh, they don't even think freedom is "freedom to". The anti-trans stuff is proof of that; anyone who believes in "freedom to" would absolutely believe people should have the right to call themselves whatever they want, dress however they want, use whatever bathroom they want, and mess around with their body chemistry however they want.

They think freedom is only for themselves, and anyone who would use their freedom in a way that they don't approve of is someone who doesn't deserve freedom. Which is to say, they don't believe in freedom at all.