Were America's Electric Car Subsidies Worth the Money? (msn.com) 249
America's electric vehicle subsidies brought a 2-to-1 return on investment, according to a paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research. "That includes environmental benefits, but mostly reflects a shift of profits to the United States," reports the New York Times. "Before the climate law, tax credits were mainly used to buy foreign-made cars."
"What the [subsidy legislation] did was swing the pendulum the other way, and heavily subsidized American carmakers," said Felix Tintelnot, an associate professor of economics at Duke University who was a co-author of the paper. Those benefits were undermined, however, by a loophole allowing dealers to apply the subsidy to leases of foreign-made electric vehicles. The provision sends profits to non-American companies, and since those foreign-made vehicles are on average heavier and less efficient, they impose more environmental and road-safety costs. Also, the researchers estimated that for every additional electric vehicle the new tax credits put on the road, about three other electric vehicle buyers would have made the purchases even without a $7,500 credit. That dilutes the effectiveness of the subsidies, which are forecast to cost as much as $390 billion through 2031.
The chief economist at Cox Automotive (which provided some of the data) tells the Times that "we could do better", but adds that the subsidies were "worth the money invested". But of course, that depends partly on how benefits were calculated: [U]ing the Environmental Protection Agency's "social cost of carbon" metric, they calculated the dollar cost of each model's lifetime carbon emissions from both manufacturing and driving. On average, emissions by gas-powered vehicles impose 57% greater costs than electric vehicles. The study then calculated harms from air pollution other than greenhouse gases — smog, for example. That's where electric vehicles start to perform relatively poorly, since generating the electricity for them still creates pollution. Those harms will probably fade as more wind and solar energy comes online, but they are significant. Finally, the authors added the road deaths associated with heavier cars. Batteries are heavy, so electric vehicles — especially the largest — are likelier to kill people in crashes.
Totaling these costs and then subtracting fiscal benefits through gas taxes and electricity bills, electric vehicles impose $16,003 in net harms, the authors said, while gas vehicles impose $19,239. But the range is wide, with the largest electric vehicles far outpacing many internal combustion cars.
By this methodology, a large electric pickup like the Rivian imposes three times the harms of a Prius, according to one of the study's co-authors (a Stanford professor of global environmental). And yet "we are subsidizing the Rivian and not the Prius..."
The chief economist at Cox Automotive (which provided some of the data) tells the Times that "we could do better", but adds that the subsidies were "worth the money invested". But of course, that depends partly on how benefits were calculated: [U]ing the Environmental Protection Agency's "social cost of carbon" metric, they calculated the dollar cost of each model's lifetime carbon emissions from both manufacturing and driving. On average, emissions by gas-powered vehicles impose 57% greater costs than electric vehicles. The study then calculated harms from air pollution other than greenhouse gases — smog, for example. That's where electric vehicles start to perform relatively poorly, since generating the electricity for them still creates pollution. Those harms will probably fade as more wind and solar energy comes online, but they are significant. Finally, the authors added the road deaths associated with heavier cars. Batteries are heavy, so electric vehicles — especially the largest — are likelier to kill people in crashes.
Totaling these costs and then subtracting fiscal benefits through gas taxes and electricity bills, electric vehicles impose $16,003 in net harms, the authors said, while gas vehicles impose $19,239. But the range is wide, with the largest electric vehicles far outpacing many internal combustion cars.
By this methodology, a large electric pickup like the Rivian imposes three times the harms of a Prius, according to one of the study's co-authors (a Stanford professor of global environmental). And yet "we are subsidizing the Rivian and not the Prius..."
Poor priorities (Score:3)
Because it's manufactured/assembled in the USA, allowing the USA to claim they're creating jobs and being climate-change responsible: Many politicians care about only one of those benefits. Also, because the USA hasn't prioritized subsidies for small-size EVs, and because consumerism in the USA requires most goods be big, and containing bells and whistles that are now, expensive, difficult to repair and enable spying.
40 years of inaction means climate-change friendly results are now more important. That's difficult when US subsidies either, a) make the manufacturer responsible for the entire life-cycle of the product, or b) treat all (EV) substitutes as equally valuable.
Re:Poor priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
I can only think of one EV in that price range. Most of them are affordable, the story that EVs are for the wealthy only is incorrect. Maybe they're not for the poor, but the poor also don't buy new automobiles either. Subsidies are for the middle class buyers, it's not a lot of money but it's enough to sway a decision betwen the 25,000 ICE or the 30,000 EV/hybrid.
Re:Poor priorities (Score:5, Informative)
It's like people still think this is the Tesla Roadster era. People need to update their stereotypes. Friggin' *China* now sells the majority of new cars as electric. Is the average Chinese car buyer a millionaire? :P
BTW, does anyone have access to the report? Because this is some hot garbage:
So they impose something they came up with...
That's not how this works - you CANNOT just attach "$X per kg of NOx, $Y per kg of PM10, $Z per kg of VOCs...." etc. Yes, vs. ICE vehicles, an EV charged purely from a fossil power source will perform better on some pollutants and worse on others. But ignoring that fossil plants, particularly the dirtiest ones, are falling fast as a fraction of charging energy, pollution is not simply about what you emit, but where you emit it. Non-CO2 emissions have meaningfully short atmospheric residence times. They become effectively irrelevant once well mixed with the broader atmosphere. ICE vehicles tend to emit at ground-level in densely populated areas - literally the worst place you could have emissions. Fossil plants tend to emit at altitude in low-population-density areas. That doesn't make their emissions irrelevant, especially in certain atmospheric conditions, but it makes them far less effective per kg at causing health harms to large numbers of people.
The Model 3 series has been, since its release in 2017, approximately the same weight as its performance and class equivalents from BMW with a full tank of petrol. This notion that EVs are super-heavy is a myth. If a manufacturer is bad at their job they can make a hugely overweight vehicle (say, the Hummer EV), but then they're probably paying so much for those extra batteries that they're not making much if any profit on them that they simply won't be producing in large volumes, and/or the price is so high that the market for it is tiny.
Furthermore, you cannot just look at one single variable and declare it to be the be-all end-all of crash safety. EVs tend to have much better crash safety scores, both for occupants and (in the EU where it's required) pedestrians, than ICEs do, on average. A big factor for example is that the shape of the frontend of an ICE is built around the needs of a big bulky engine, whereas for an EV, most of the volume of the frontend is only for crash safety and streamlining. And it's not just about the external shape, but what's inside as well. Instead of a big, largely incompressible steel engine filling up the space, EVs commonly have hollow "frunk" compartments. Engineering for crash and pedestrian safety just becomes much easier.
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New cars? I don't know any that cheap in America, and yet cars are everywhere. Someone buys the new cars so that in several years they become the used cars that many people buy. Why point fingers at EVs here, where is the anger at mid range automobiles that use gasoline that cost the same amount? Some of the most expensive vehicles are trucks and SUVs, yet I don't see conservative backlash against those driving their luxury pickups. Bitching about EVs based upon price feels like a diversionary tactic de
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I don't like the idea of subsiding cars for the rich.
The EV tax credit has income limits. Also, the current tax credit policy finally includes used EVs, so us plebs finally get to join in on the fun. In fact, it was through the tax credits and a quirk of ICE vs EV used car values that I was able to essentially make an even swap between an entry-level Nissan Versa and a Chevy Bolt.
Yes, I seriously went from a car that literally still had crank windows, to an EV that had a brand new replaced battery pack with a reset warranty due to the recall. I've got no c
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It's not to help rich people buy a $120,000 EV. It's to stop them from buying a $120,000 ICE.
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The rich exploit the labor of the proletariat. The faster you realize this, the faster we can get to eating the rich.
Re:Poor priorities (Score:4, Funny)
What kind of sauce goes with the rich? My doctor told me to cut our rich foods anyway.
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If they said "EVs are a scam and have no resale value after 5 years", Cox Automotive's business would suffer.
Not really, most of their business is based around traditional gasoline cars.
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is it ? 100% of the welfare queen money goes back into the system, usually locally. Money going to a rich person tends to get invested and taken out of circulation, and often taken out of the country.
Re:Poor priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
The rich do not create jobs...The rich mostly live on passive income from their money.
Not sure why you'd think that.
The vast majority of rich people got that way by starting companies. Some really rich ones (Bezos, Musk, Ellison, Zuckerberg) are still running the companies even though they could easily quit. Musk, in particular, could have stopped after he quit PayPal but no, he got involved in Tesla, Solar City, SpaceX, X, and the Boring Company. Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, two of my favorites, were involved in running HP well past a typical retirement age.
Even the idle fools living off passive income, where do you suppose that passive income comes from? Oh right, by giving money to companies so the companies can buy tools and equipment so the people they hire can do their jobs. You can't hire without capital and that's what some rich (and lots of not so rich) people provide.
Re:Poor priorities (Score:5, Insightful)
Point taken about entrepreneurs creating jobs. But to address another part of your post:
The rich do not create jobs...The rich mostly live on passive income from their money.
[...]
Even the idle fools living off passive income, where do you suppose that passive income comes from? Oh right, by giving money to companies so the companies can buy tools and equipment so the people they hire can do their jobs. You can't hire without capital and that's what some rich (and lots of not so rich) people provide.
So ... these "idle fools" give their money to someone else who uses it to create jobs. Well okay, but forgive me if I'm not as impressed as I am with entrepreneurs who take a more hands-on approach.
And let's not forget that many of us in our retirement will hope to live off "passive income" from wealth we have accumulated doing hard work. But let's just not think we're creating jobs to the same extent as others. We'll be somewhat-withdrawn participants in the economy.
And finally, let's tip our hats to those who actually do the jobs that get created. They are the ones who push us all forward, and hopefully they will receive and enjoy their rewards in the future, as we have.
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So ... these "idle fools" give their money to someone else who uses it to create jobs. Well okay, but forgive me if I'm not as impressed as I am with entrepreneurs who take a more hands-on approach.
That's fine. I agree, it's a lot more sweat actually running the company. I just wanted to point out the CEO can't do anything without capital.
I'm an older person approaching retirement. I've saved and invested my entire life. I would have loved to travel, buy great cars, and lived the high life. I didn't, similar I'm sure to many of us here. It isn't free to me to invest my savings, savings I could have spent on myself. And I'm taking a risk with my retirement saving, giving CEOs my cash, hoping they'll de
Re:Poor priorities (Score:4)
Retirement should not be predicated on companies not failing. The whole 401k thing in the US is creating so many side effects. We are letting companies get away with a lot, because we want our retirement.
Unless you have a lot of cash, it is really hard to invest above 5-7% ( and even there ). 10k/yr for 30 years gives you 35k/yr to live on for 20-25 years once you retire, assuming a 5% consistent return. Do you think you can live on 35k a year in 30-40 years ?
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Investing in a shit company does not take money out of the economy, it just takes it out of the pocket of the investor. A business fails because it loses money, that money has to go somewhere - suppliers, landlords, employees etc.
A rich investor getting richer generally does take money out of the economy, because they will often hoard a lot of it, or place it in offshore tax havens.
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because they will often hoard a lot of it
Can you explain what you mean by "hoarding"?
Are you claiming that rich people keep piles of cash under their mattresses?
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>where do you suppose that passive income comes from
rentseeking
capital begets capital this ain't news
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Rentseeking is good. It ensures there is a mechanism for allocating capital wisely.
I don't think you understand what rent-seeking is.
Read this: Rent seeking [wikipedia.org]
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Most rich people inherited their wealth.
They didn't earn it. They didn't start companies. They didn't create jobs.
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Most rich people inherited their wealth.
Wrong.
Of American millionaires, only 21% inherited anything at all.
16% inherited more than $100,000.
Only 3% received an inheritance above $1 million.
How Many Millionaires Inherited Their Wealth? [ramseysolutions.com]
What about billionaires?
Of the billionaires on the Forbes 400 list, only 30% inherited their wealth.
The 2023 Forbes 400 Self-Made Score [forbes.com]
They didn't earn it. They didn't start companies. They didn't create jobs.
Wrong again.
88% of American millionaires made their money by starting companies or investing in companies.
Entrepreneur statistics [zippia.com]
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Re:Poor priorities (Score:4, Informative)
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People from prosperous families are successful because they're taught financial literacy.
My parents weren't wealthy, but they did okay, and they taught me how mortgages work, how credit cards work, and how to tell a good investment from a scam.
The most important advice they gave me was:
1. Live on 2/3rds of your income and save the rest.
2. Buy index funds.
That was good advice, and I passed it on to my kids.
I'm surprised how many of my co-workers live way beyond their means and appear to be "rich", but are re
Re:Poor priorities (Score:4, Insightful)
This article seems to be about direct cash inheritance and not inheriting the wealth, companies, real estate, etc.
Re: Poor priorities (Score:5, Informative)
While there's pleanty of self-made wealthy folks, remember that you can become wealthy due to the wealth of family member without inheriting a dime. If you have a wealthy family you can:
-Be appointed to executive leadership positions that a similar person without generational wealth would never be considered for.
-Be given loans you would not ordinarily qualify for
-Be given buisness opportunities others would not recieve either as a favor to relatives or to curry favor with them.
-Gain connections by proxy that provide a gateway to wealth that isn't generally avaliable.
Just as a few examples. By your accounting Paris Hilton is a self-made millionaire, after all she has started several buisnesses. The same with the Trump kids. But I think most people would rightly look at them and lump them in with "inherited wealth" in principle, even if they made money before they were given any explicitly. It's well documented that only a small fraction of intergenerational earners in the US fall out of the upper income bracket, that wouldn't be the case if most wealthy people were earning their way to the top on their own.
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As one of those fools living on passive income, I can confirm that this isn't true. I have a bunch of stock in <a tech company frequently discussed on slashdot> , and you know how much of my purchase money actually went to the company in question? None. Nada. Zilch. The sh
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As one of those fools living on passive income, I can confirm that this isn't true. I have a bunch of stock in <a tech company frequently discussed on slashdot> , and you know how much of my purchase money actually went to the company in question? None. Nada. Zilch. The shares I bought, like 99.9% of all stock purchases by anyone, were bought "pre-owned".
That's a common perception and I don't think it's the most accurate way to view the situation. After you've bought a stock share from another investor, you're functionally equivalent to the person who bought the share directly from the company. As far as the company is concerned, it still has the capital the original investor provided, there's just a different name on the share. The original investor now has nothing to do with the company and you have your capital tied up just like the original person did.
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subsidies are political levers (Score:5, Insightful)
nice economic study
But Tesla disrupted all automakers. The USA is a car-first nation with a lot of distance to cover nationwide. Twin calamities of EV and global warming threw the whole underpinning of burning oil to get energy in cars. Subsidies were a life ring to legacy and EV automakers to transition their business away from oil.
We will see the results beginning latter half 2025 through 2027 how well that money was spent. Of the 400+ automakers worldwide, don’t expect more than two US automakers to emerge in EV. Out years 2028 and beyond is where consolidation, diversification and strategic partnerships will eclipse the dyed-in-wool carmakers who didn’t innovate beyond autos.
Tesla included, no one has found the sweet spot, secret formula and trick to designing the future. We get a lot of yesteryear sedans, pickup trucks and quite frankly SXS is the true innovators to watch. Consumers may need to settle for 150mi radius and public transport beyond.
Re:subsidies are political levers (Score:4, Insightful)
"Finally, the authors added the road deaths associated with heavier cars." - How can they put this on EVs when you have such oversized and pedestrian unfriendly monsters such as pickups and SUVs? [axios.com]
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I don't know how US subsidies compared to European ones in terms of value, but the European ones seem to have been much more effective. We have better charging infrastructure, and a much wider selection of EVs, including more affordable long range ones. Right now you can get a 250 mile MG5 for under £20k, and it's a much nicer and more practical car than the price would suggest.
I think maybe the lack of a hard deadline for ending fossil car sales in the US has not helped. Carrot and stick, we ca
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You've surely seen the Canyonero advertisement from the Simpsons? Like most good satire it dated remarkably fast. The Canyonero is only an SUV. Manufacturers found that they could persuade people to buy even vaster vehicles in the form of trucks.
The 20k MG isn't so large that you could run over 15 kids in front of your truck without even noticing so it's not really for the American market...
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The Canyonero is only an SUV. Manufacturers found that they could persuade people to buy even vaster vehicles in the form of trucks.
We are talking about the USA, right?. We have SUVs based on pickup truck platforms. They are just as big as pickups because they ARE pickups underneath, the only substantial difference is that they have a big cab with an enclosed back end instead of a smaller cab and an open bed.
In fact, some would argue that if it doesn't have a full frame, it's not an SUV at all, but a crossover (or "CUV"). This is undeniably true if it's based on a car platform, which a lot of them are, and then there is a grey area for
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However, most cars are used in cities while rural and distance travel is a small fraction
Yes, the vast majority of driving is short distance, but people who are buying a vehicle will want one that covers all of their usage. That's what fast chargers on the highways are for - they make those occasional long trips slightly slower, so owning a short range EV just means one or two more charging stops per year instead of being unable to do it.
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Well, country bumpkins don't care about city slickers either, hence I don't see a problem here.
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Wrong way to evaluate EV subsidies (Score:3)
EV subsidies were intended to jump start US manufacturing capability. So, the only important result to evaluate is whether car companies are better able to manufacture EVs after the subsidies are removed. If the answer is that the car companies can still only profitably make EVs with subsidies, then the subsidies have failed.
The article mentions that most past EV buyers would have still bought EVs even without the subsidies, so that suggests that maybe the subsidies are working. However, those past EV buyers have tended to be not poor. So, it remains to be seen if not rich buyers will buy EVs without a subsidy.
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The article mentions that most past EV buyers would have still bought EVs even without the subsidies, so that suggests that maybe the subsidies are working.
At the margin, there has to be a number of people who bought an EV with the subsidy but who would not have without it. Unless the supply is limited and people would have paid list price and more to get one of the few vehicles available. My impression is EVs are not that scarce.
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there has to be a number of people who bought an EV with the subsidy but who would not have without it.
Me. Twice.
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Do the new EV's replace ICE vehicles? (Score:2, Interesting)
The problem is that its not at all clear that electric vehicles replace ICE vehicles. Instead the subsidies may just get someone to buy an additional vehicle who otherwise would have gone on driving the car they already have. They trade the old car in, someone else drives it for the rest of its life and there is no reduction in emissions. So there is nothing to offset the higher manufacturing footprint of an EV.
In order to test the value of the subsidies you need to test the question of how many of the add
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They trade the old car in, someone else drives it for the rest of its life and there is no reduction in emissions.
The problem here is that this person bought an old ICE car rather than a new ICE or EV car. Addressing why old cars are resold is where you might need to investigate - perhaps having a large % of the population on low wages means they can never buy a new car, so they buy pre-owned.
That means you need to wait another cycle (ten years or so?) of car ownership before these people can buy a second hand EV...
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EVs have been on the road for over 15 years now. There are healthy used EV markets out there. Granted, the vast majority are Teslas for obvious reasons, but there are other EVs out there, just not as much as other EVs haven't been on the market as long. But they are out there. Even a 2018 EV is already 6 years old and approaching 7, so these should be starting to come on the used mark
Re:Do the new EV's replace ICE vehicles? (Score:4, Insightful)
Instead the subsidies may just get someone to buy an additional vehicle who otherwise would have gone on driving the car they already have. They trade the old car in, someone else drives it for the rest of its life and there is no reduction in emissions.
Both my partner and I ended up trading in our ICE vehicles for EVs. Presumably the new owners of our previous vehicles would've just bought someone else's used ICE vehicles had ours not become available on the secondary market, so the fact that we're now driving EVs does represent a reduction of emissions.
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But it would have been better if you had bought an existing vehicle or kept the ones you had.
My partner has a miserably long commute (roughly 55 miles round-trip), so it's entirely possible the current owner of his previous vehicle isn't burning nearly as much gas in it. It also could still be sitting on a lot somewhere unsold, who knows.
My previous car was a Nissan Versa known for having a particularly unreliable CVT. It will likely take itself off the road "cash for clunkers"-style before too long.
The reality is people who otherwise would have had to walk, bike, take transit or not take the trip now have a car available to use and they will use it
The only people who do these things in our area are those without the means to afford a car, and t
Re:Do the new EV's replace ICE vehicles? (Score:5, Informative)
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Most people don't randomly buy a new car for no reason, so most EV sales are directly displacing ICE sales.
The point of the subsidies though was to help develop the technology, both for the sake of the planet and to make sure that the US stayed competitive with EV drivetrains and batteries. It seems like it has largely failed to do the latter, unfortunately.
But who owns the companies? (Score:2)
US-based companies may have increased sales and profits. But the companies don't keep the profits, they return them to shareholders. So, were those shareholders Americans or not? And did the older subsidies, which largely went to foreign companies, eventually wind up with Americans? And did the foreign companies assemble the cars in the US or elsewhere? Curious minds want to know!
This is yet another example where attributing something to company X obscures what's actually going on. A company is a legal fict
Re:But who owns the companies? (Score:5, Interesting)
But the companies don't keep the profits, they return them to shareholders.
No, they don't. Most companies keep the lions share of the profits. In theory the shareholders benefit from the company increasing in value. It would be interesting to see what would happen if companies were required to return all their profits to shareholders in the form of dividends.
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No, they don't. Most companies keep the lions share of the profits. In theory the shareholders benefit from the company increasing in value. It would be interesting to see what would happen if companies were required to return all their profits to shareholders in the form of dividends.
Do you have any numbers to support that? It's not my impression.
In the US, I believe there are laws requiring companies to pay dividends. IIRC, Apple (and maybe Microsoft) got into trouble with these in the 00s. Apple had accumulated an enormous war chest, ostensibly as a rainy day fund. The DOJ wasn't having it and Apple was no-so-gently encouraged to start paying out. If I further recall correctly, Microsoft went through a similar process.
Personally, I don't think there needs to be a law about it. People
ROI (Score:3)
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Tax breaks for low emissions vehicles mean improved health for people who would have been breathing in pollution from fossil cars. That translates to less productivity lost to poor health, a direct benefit to the economy and the tax take.
There are numerous other examples of how subsidies can have a nice ROI. It's just that it is indirect and sometimes difficult to measure, but it's certainly there.
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How can a subsidy have a return on investment? The party providing the subsidy does not get any money back, so they have no ROI
If the company pays taxes, that is giving money back (if the government is the investor).
To calculate the ROI, you need to calculate how much taxes the company paid, and how much it would have paid if the subsidy hadn't happened. You also need to consider taxes from other companies who used technology developed. Obviously this is not all easy to measure, but of course that's a different problem.
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How can a subsidy have a return on investment?
In this case, we're talking about a subsidy seeking to reduce AGW impact. We can compare the results of the subsidy to other ways in which we could have spent the money to reduce AGW to determine what the return was; spending $x on the subsidy had the same effect as spending $y on some other method, so the return for our $x was $y.
I feel like even AI could have answered this question... hmm, yep, here's a couple ideas from Google:
Worth the money to reduce emissions? No. (Score:2)
Re: Worth the money to reduce emissions? No. (Score:2)
The residents of large cities in the U.S. don't own cars in the same numbers/ratio their suburban counterparts do... if they did, every apartment in Manhattan would have a couple parking spaces PER APARTMENT. (Note: They don't..,)
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Announcing RightwingNutjob treehug credits (Score:2)
You pay me a sum of money determined by some function of how badly you want to keep living your first world lifestyle while pretending to denounce it and its technological, economic, and social predicates
And I go out in my back yard, pick a tree, and give it one big sloppy hug.
Extra $ for pix of said hug.
Extra $$ for pix of stuff beyond the hug. If internet-rando-on-vegetation is your thing. Not judging. Well...I am judging, just not judging how you blow off steam at the end of the day.
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You've basically described carbon credits, not EV subsidies.
EV subsidies allow someone to keep living their first world lifestyle while truly lessening their carbon footprint (and also saving a few bucks on gas, which can then be spent elsewhere in the economy).
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At what cost? (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, the researchers estimated that for every additional electric vehicle the new tax credits put on the road, about three other electric vehicle buyers would have made the purchases even without a $7,500 credit. That dilutes the effectiveness of the subsidies, which are forecast to cost as much as $390 billion through 2031.
People have been buying cars for a century without federal subsidies, now apparently they are required?
And that number, $390 Billion? That's $390,000 Million, divide that by 390 million, and that's about $1,000 for every man, woman and child in the U.S., citizens, amnesty-seekers, migrants, etc. "... That's insane.
The subsidies don't make the cars affordable, it simply spreads $7,500 of the cost over the entire tax-paying population of the country.
Why can't car manufacturers simply be left alone to make the
Re:At what cost? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why can't car manufacturers simply be left alone to make the cars the customers want to buy, rather than have state and federal mandates that require these subsidies?
Because the cars they are selling are causing enormous problems even for people who don't buy them. And the car manufacturers have shown that left to their own devices the problems they create are even worse.
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>> Why can't car manufacturers simply be left alone
Well its real simple. ICE vehicles pollute the atmosphere and we have to stop doing that. They also make us dependent on foreign oil which is a strategic vulnerability. And besides, as the article states; "the researchers found that Americans have seen a two-to-one return on their investment in the new electric vehicle subsidies". What's not to like?
Oh, the Prius... (Score:2)
Whenever any report suggests that buying a Prius is a better ideal than any EV... follow the money and see where the Toyota donation came from.
Toyota is third most obstructive company towards action climate change (after ExxonMobil and Chevron).
They never are. Germany ... (Score:2)
... has the same problem. Aloof lobbyists and politicians pushing for subsidies that are basically financial support for the wealthy and rich. Even the green leadership regularly pushes for this sort of nonsense. Totally bizarre.
This has been going on for literal decades (Score:3)
The game plan is always the same: Use subsidies to boost domestic production. Use xenophobic propaganda and jingoistic foreign policy to keep out foreign competitors.
The USA has been doing this for literally decades. The real issue is that despite all of this, American carmakers still lag behind their foreign competitors. For electric cars, the place where American carmakers fall short is battery production. They just canâ(TM)t make them cheaply enough.
I think what has really flipped things around this decade is that American consumption of automobiles has been eclipsed by foreign consumers. I surmise that, in this environment, the metric of success here is whether the exports of American vehicles has gone up appreciably due to the subsidies.
Yellowstone Paradox - Pick Your Poisoning (Score:2)
You can drive a fully electric car through Yellowstone and not spew any exhaust. The fuel itself isn't doing any damage in the park, however, the way the electricity was generated probably was harmful somewhere else.
But the truth it, that electricity was going to be generated anyway and used by residents for their ho
Re:A good idea prospers on its own... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:A good idea prospers on its own... (Score:5, Insightful)
These are good examples of social benefits that the "free market" won't invest in.
Health care and education must be organized and paid for by government.
Our "free market" medical industry is a complete failure. The US has the most expensive health care (costs 2x any other country and doesn't cover everybody) and the absolute worth health indicators of any developed country.
Education is another example where the "free market" puts people in severe debt for years.
Health care and education should be paid for by the government and free to the student or patient.
Both health care and education have a good return on investment... both for the individual and for society.
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Agreed. For me, I go to the edge cases. Solve those and we can implement many many things.
I have a friend who is Belgian. He wanted to go to state funded college but the state denied him because he didn't get good enough test scores. He worked manual jobs/factories and yet still had full healthcare and owned a nice small single family home with his family.
Similarly with healthcare...how do you deal with unlimited care needs but limited resources etc. In New Zealand, if you get breast cancer and the
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The reality is that most stuff is better done collectively, at least at the high level. Contract stuff out if needs be, but most things are overall cheaper if we fund them all together and make them universal.
Re:A good idea prospers on its own... (Score:5, Informative)
1. US life expectancy is three years below the OECD average
2. Avoidable death rates are higher than the OECD average
3. The US has the highest rates of infant and maternal mortality in the OECD
4. Suicide rates are among the highest in the OECD
5. The obesity rate is nearly twice the OECD average
6. Multimorbidity rates are the highest in the OECD
7. Covid death rates were the highest in the OECD
etc
Perinatal mortality in particular is a complete disgrace in the US
So, yes, the US has poor health outcomes compared to other developed nations. If you disagree, you better have some impressive metrics to counterbalance the ones I just listed above.
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Real numbers from the real world:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/31... [cnn.com]
The United States spends more on health care than any other high-income country but still has the lowest life expectancy at birth and the highest rate of people with multiple chronic diseases, according to a new report from The Commonwealth Fund, an independent research group.
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Except of course every other modern first world nation seems to provide more to their citizens at less cost than we do.
The sheer creativity and economic explosion this country could have if people didn't need to have a job for healthcare boggles the mind. Americans are amazing and it's a shame you want to keep the yoke of private healthcare on them.
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Yeah, it is so good, Canadians aren't allowed — by law — to pay for their own MRIs. So, instead of waiting six months, some of them drive to Buffalo, NY, where it is possible.
That's a problem unique to Canada. In most of Europe you can either wait for free non urgent treatment, or you can pay to have it sooner.
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Like streets and roads.
Re:Subsidies are not ROI (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm going to contest that view. Subsidies can and do have a return on investment. Also, coercive or not, using present resources in the hopes of getting more "something" in the future is the definition of investment and has nothing to do with the source of the resources.
If the public (or even a corporation, using revenue from one division to fund another one) uses money to support some activity, and the overall productivity of society improves, that is indeed a return on investment. And often times it is beneficial because without the "subsidy" there's not enough to get past whatever barrier to entry exists for that desired thing.
Subsidies can be a net gain for society, if they encourage developments in areas that have "too low a return" for the private market. This is because the government doesn't have to get a monetary return on the investment, but private organizations typically do.
Now, some (many?) subsidies are indeed ineffective or even detrimental; but a gross generalization is an overstatement. Comparing with looting is also disingenuous; for the looter, looting does indeed have an ROI, measured against risk of getting caught.
You can argue all day about if you think this was a wise or effective subsidy, but trying to claim it is not an investment is misleading at best.
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He's just one of the trolls du juor. As you note subsidies are a tool that can work well or not so well depending on how it's implemented.
They ideally help a concept get off the ground in the face of entrenched, monied competition that won't change fast enough to meet the coming changes.
Musk is a putz and dangerous but he did almost singlehandedly jumpstart the EV trend in the US by buying into Tesla and making it part of his ego party. As we can see with the CyberTruck, he sucks at *actually* building an
Re:Subsidies are not ROI (Score:5, Interesting)
Musk is a putz and dangerous but he did almost singlehandedly jumpstart the EV trend in the US by buying into Tesla and making it part of his ego party.
What Tesla got right was their charging network and the realization that people want EVs with 200+ miles of range, rather than to be preached at that "enough for your daily commute should be adequate". It is entirely possible that had Tesla not shook up the industry, EVs would still primarily consist of city cars like the earlier model years of the Nissan Leaf.
Lately though, with Musk at the helm, Tesla seems to be doing their damnedest to pull defeat from the jaws of victory. Some of the recent updates to their vehicles are real head-scratchers (such as removing the turn signal stalk), and Musk's political affinity for candidates who have an axe to grind against EVs also seems rather counterintuitive when you're in the business of selling EVs.
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It is entirely possible that had Tesla not shook up the industry, EVs would still primarily consist of city cars like the earlier model years of the Nissan Leaf.
It's times like these I truly despise the automotive industry. I went to go look up NEV sales and those dickfaces have reused the term for "new electric vehicles" and now I want to punch them all right in their fucking dicks.
Before Tesla, the most popular type of EV in the USA was the NEV, or "Neighborhood Electric Vehicle". The closest thing we had to a Kei car, NEVs were basically glorified golf carts that came at about the lower end of typical new car prices — far too much for what they were, and o
Re: Subsidies are not ROI (Score:2)
Musk didnâ(TM)t need subsidies to get Tesla off the ground, he invested with money he made. So why did Ford and GM and Fisker need these subsidies taken from places like Tesla and people like Musk only to transfer the funds to China and then largely abandon the market because they failed.
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Subsidies are not investments because they represent a coercive transfer of wealth rather than a voluntary exchange based on mutual benefit.
I got a $4k subsidy on my used Chevy Bolt. The money I'm not spending for gas is now being spent elsewhere in the economy. It's very likely I will have outspent the subsidy well before the car exceeds its useful life. Unless you have stock in the petroleum industry, it's still an economic win.
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So how much do you pay to charge it?
Roughly $0.04 per mile, charging at home.
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It's really funny to see people make these kinds of "well dammit how much did it cost you to charge huh?" challenges as though they've uncovered some kind of gotcha, when the truth is that, yes, those of us with EVs have thought about the costs of charging, and no, it doesn't change the basic maths of the purchase even the tiniest bit.
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So while the rich man is "investing" by using other people's money obtained through dubious means (rent seeking, wage theft, overpriced goods, exploiting loopholes), then why isn't the government also investing when it uses other people's money that was acquired through dubious means?
The company that receives the money considers these both to be investments.
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So build a couple new Megacities where you push the plebs in the pods and then the rest of the nation can be preserved for the elite? Until you have a robot army under a dictatorship, it's not going to happen. Public transportation outside of high density cities is extremely expensive and even there it's a massive PITA. If you like city living you sometimes accept the PITA because parking and city traffic is a bigger PITA ... but it's a huge PITA regardless.
What we get out of cars is time, massive amounts o
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Public transportation outside of high density cities is extremely expensive and even there it's a massive PITA.
The burbs are a massive money pit.
If you like city living you sometimes accept the PITA because parking and city traffic is a bigger PITA ... but it's a huge PITA regardless.
What parking? What traffic? I guess people who insist on driving cars in cities have to worry about that but the great thing about living in a city is you don't need to do any of that.
What we get out of cars is time, massive a
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I'm going to take a wild guess you own a very expensive single family home and still own a car any way. That's not really how most people get to live when working in a large city. They can't afford to both move close to their job and get a single family home (which nearly everyone wants).
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70% of people in the US live in single family homes and there's developed nations where it's more ... they can pay their way just fine.
Small cities with surrounding villages will have small commutes, the problem is oversized cities. Villages is how most people want to live, individual transport is what is needed to live in them (they can be walkable just fine, but you still have to get to work and centralized services). If you try to chase people into cities they'll chase you up a scaffold.
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and busses. Everyone goes in them. There are no "elites". We do away with them.
Even if you're willing to bend your schedule around that of the trains and busses, public transportation still has a huge last mile problem. Those eyesore dockless electric rental scooters are an attempt at solving that problem, but realistically it probably makes more sense just to have your own scooter if you're regularly going to rely on them, because there's no guarantee a randomly placed scooter will be available when you need it.
Public transport also requires a level of patience most Americans just d
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Not pods, trains and busses. Everyone goes in them.
Pods that everyone goes in would accomplish the same thing as trains and buses, but with a better outcome because trains and buses have inherent limitations due to their respective physical sizes and the impact of their required infrastructure. They are also more feasible as they protect automotive industry corporations, which in turn protects jobs. Until we are ready to allow people to work fewer hours and still be housed, fed, clothed and so on, we are going to need those jobs. And judging by... *gestures
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Electric cars aren't going to solve the problems we have with cars. They're not sustainable any more than gas cars are. The only serious benefit we get is we get to import a bit less oil so we're not quite as dependent on the Middle East but we're still pretty dependent.
I agree electric cars are likely no more sustainable in an emission free world than ICE cars. But the United States is the largest oil producer in the world as well as the largest consumer. We produce more than we consume. We are a net exporter of oil and most of our imports come from Canada I believe.
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"No" just means people who have to get from A to B and can't afford an EV will continue to drive their ICE vehicle. That's letting perfect be the enemy of good.
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Heavy EVs bad, so buy heavy ass SUVs and commuter trucks :-)
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Re:It might have made cars more expensive... (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe instead of subsidies, Tesla should have been granted a $100,000,000 grant/loan
As someone who wanted an EV that wasn't a Tesla, no. Giving the subsidy directly to the purchasers allows us to decide which businesses we want to support, and that's a bit more in line with how capitalism should work.
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