Regardless, the utilities argument against EV adoption is mostly debunked. We don’t know for sure what the future holds.

Agreed. All the electricity providers around me seem to have no concern and are all in. Heck, besides providing free charging mine actually has two Teslas and a Bolt that they allow members to check out for a day to test drive.

https://cobbemc.com/content/electric-vehicle-checkout

So Elon Musk leaves Texas because of taxes and regulations (according to some here), and then he says...

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/12/elon...arbon-tax.html

Elon Musk: ‘My top recommendation’ for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is a carbon tax

...I’m so confused.

can't read specifics due to paywall.

but my 'read between the lines' moment from the title: he's like every other rich entitled ****wad. "tax THE OTHERS that aren't doing what i'm doing so i don't get taxed."

one of tesla's many income streams has been selling all of their unused carbon credits to other industry players.

Nothing confusing here.

[definition] hypocrite: 1. a person who pretends to have virtues, moral or religious beliefs, principles, etc., that he or she does not actually possess, especially a person whose actions belie stated beliefs. 2. see Elon Musk

I'm sure the fact that higher gas taxes would increase Tesla sales has absolutely nothing at all to do with his selfless and purely altruistic views on this.

(For further reading, see: pompous; self-aggrandizing; egomaniacal; self-serving)

Apparently the Great Elon thinks it's OK for him to flee California to escape paying taxes, as long as it's offset by imposing a tax on everyone else but him. Seems fair. After all, the money to pay for government services has to come from somewhere, and as the Goddess Leona Helmsley said, "Only the little people pay taxes".

Aside from all that, it does seem the only way to move to a renewable energy economy and away from fossil fuels would be by some form of direct government action, such as either paying for and building renewable energy generating plants (solar, wind, tidal, etc.), or some form of carbon tax and hoping the 'market' would 'figure it out'.

The key concept is paying for. The money to pay for replacing fossil fuel generating stations with renewable sources has to come from somewhere. Since there is no such thing as "government money" - after all, the money any government has comes from us - one way or another, we will have to pay for this. Which means higher taxes. However it's packaged, higher income tax, carbon use tax, or higher energy costs (if it's left to utility companies), we will have to pay for the construction of new renewable energy plants.

I'll leave it to much smarter economic minds than mine (which means pretty much everyone) to figure out how to do this fairly and efficiently, in ways that don't disproportionately hurt lower income people, and avoiding waste and corruption (oh, that's right - no one has figured out how to do that, at least not in this country).

CAFE has been rigged to benefit big3 automakers and fossil fuels. De-rig it, make ONE number that goes up every single year, and if you sell cars that get worse mileage they get a guzzler tax based on how far over. Sell cars that do better and get a tax credit.
And ONE number means the *same* standard applies to SUVs. CAFE rules are rigged to favor bigger less-efficient cars, and especially ginormous and hideously inefficient SUVs. Let's FIX that.

what's to be confused about?

Musk leaving CA is just fodder for the average person to hate California. It's no different than other auto makers going to another state, they have their own legitimate reasons but all you and I see are "these states are so much more business friendly than California" and not see what actually happens behind the scenes. At the end of the day, if Musk is going to start selling some of his personal gains from TSLA's stock price rise, he's better off in a state with no personal income tax. I have no problems with that if I made that much money in a year.

It's like all this recent talk about bringing chipmakers back into the US for manufacturing. Great... who the hell are going to man the factories? There aren't enough graduates with advance degrees in the US as-is, you think we can just grow people with education overnight?

If you go through the pages of this thread, you will find a lot of conversation about the exodus from California from companies to individuals. Specifically, Elon Musk was used as a reference for someone who wants to get away from taxes and regulations, but here he is calling for a regulation for higher carbon taxes. Yes, I get why that would favor his business model and why it would be good for getting us to a carbon neutral future, so I was just being snarky in reference to those earlier debates.

Oh I know, I see comments like this on a weekly basis.

If where I lived was purely about how much I pay in taxes, I'd move out of the US entirely. Plenty of places in the world where I can pay nothing in taxes.

What people fail to understand is that some companies move because they are trying to be more efficient (Toyota), and some other companies move because another state (TN) bent over backwards to get a company (Nissan) to move.

People forget that the Japanese car companies established their roots in California because back in the 1960/70/80s, airlines still needed to refuel in Hawaii or Alaska to fly to the US. Nonstop flights did not start until longer range 747-400s or 767/777s were introduced, and even those aircraft could not go from Tokyo to Chicago or Dallas without refueling somewhere. Add on the abundance of a large Japanese American population, and it was easy for Japanese car companies to be based in Southern California since it made doing business easier.

As these companies became more global, there was less incentive for them to stay here. Add on the fact that most of their automotive plants are in the midwest US, and it simply makes better business sense to relocate their HQ to someplace central in the US.

But you know, "regulations"

Yea I've also heard of negative priced or free electricity in Texas that people use to mine bitcoin for example. There definitely is a minimum load that a natural gas turbine plant or any other thermal plant can run at since the turbine needs to be spinning fast enough with enough throughput to produce power at any reasonable efficiency. Base load plants are supposed to take up this capacity but it must be possible for the electrical energy demand to fall below what the base load plants produce.

Power = Potential x Current

In order for the electric grid to work, it needs to be maintained at a relatively constant potential. Power can be varied, but is optimized around specific outputs so you wind up with a step function of how much power you can add to the grid. Additionally, if you produce power at one point you get a voltage drop the further from that source you get, so you need to distribute your production to maintain that constant voltage. Basically, you need to maintain a minimum voltage for all customers at all times.

However, if there is not much current draw your voltage shoots up if you don't reduce power output, which as discussed has a minimum limit for a given area/grid topography.

Well, your equipment is only configured to handle so much voltage before you get all sorts of bad things happening. So to prevent that you need to dump your excess power somewhere safely.

Well.....

The 2022 Bolt EV and EUV announcements were typical GM. Just enough to keep you interested, but also enough to make you disappointed. I'm ignoring the EV because it's too small (and ugly) for my needs. As far as the EUV:

The Good.

• Super Cruise. I like the way SuperCruise works and would definitely buy it.
• Design. The EUV design is OK, and is definitely a Chevy. I also happen to think the red/black one works well.
• L2 Charging. The price includes installation of a L2 Charger at home
• Interior Design. It still looks like a car.
• Apparently it can jump into hyperspace and keep up with a x-wing. I'm going to insist on that if I buy one....

The not so good.

• Range. 250 miles. Really wanted it to be 300 or even 350.
• Design. OK. I like it for what it is, but its not very exciting. Oh, and the EV is UGly.
• Price. It is probably priced right but I was hoping it would be less.
• No AWD, although not a deal killer for me.
• No mention of performance specs which means, nothing exciting there as I'm guessing it really doesn't keep up with an x-wing...

In the end, I could live with the EUV as a commuter/3rd car, but not at the new price. I guess I'll keep looking for someone besides Tesla to release a sports car, coupe e-car.

I wonder if they'll sell me the x-wing?

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/02...v-the-ioniq-5/

Here’s the first of Hyundai’s new 800-volt EVs—the Ioniq 5

https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-conte...-Ioniq-5-1.jpg

I like the exterior, they lose me on the interior.

You would have to go to a dealer a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.

It is a little odd. Not just modern, but weird. Maybe it is the arm rest? I don’t know. The exterior is good. It reminds me of a VW Golf front with a Tiguan/Honda EV profile. Overall, I wouldn’t mind it.

I think it has to do with the sliding center console. It leaves so much wasted space. Plus, I don't see the point. I'm not going to slide it back for the passengers behind me, I'm likely using it.

Just as well, if its a GM product, the targeting computer would probably go out just as I was ready to make a critical shot, and I don't have the Force as a backup...

As an aside, I watched this "announcement/commercial" on our 4K 77" TV at home. It's amazing how well they can integrate CGI into real life. Except for the fact the pilot never turns his head, it absolutely looks like the x-wing is flying alongside the car.

Which is a shame. Watched a quick video of it on Fully Charged and they said that the Koreans are the only ones currently up there with Tesla on Battery/Range.

I think the floating centre consoles will be something we get used to, it's not the 1st car to do it, as without the trans tunnel that comes with the adapted ICE cars what's the point in taking up the space unnecessarily.

As I mentioned above, I don't see the advantage of it "floating" when they could just as easily provide a console for the back passengers providing more utility all around. Empty space between the seats in a car interior provides no real advantage, it's just empty space. It should be put to use.

Now that I think about it, it's probably the reason I don't like the "modern/Tesla Dash" look. It's empty space that something should be done with besides making it look like an unused shelf in a closet.

If GM made the X-Wing i'd leave it there at the dealership, in the galaxy that's far far away.

My experience with GM products says the engines won't let you down, but the interior blinky lights and doodads may fail along the way and you'll have to slap the dash on occasion and R2D2 might rust a little bit.

I'll admit the interior is better when looked at from the driver's seat, and it does have some actual controls outside the video screens.

The wife likes the look. Going to try a Polestar 2, but this looks equally good and Hyundai range is good, so could well be one of those that replaces the family wagon.

That's getting to the acceptable range for me.

In other news, Morgan Stanley reports the Mach E is siphoning substantial sales from Tesla. Not surprised, it really is a nice EV.

I apparently saw one last weekend. I say apparently because I didn't notice it but my brother was driving behind me and saw it (drove opposite direction on a 2 lane road). I guess they blend in.

That report, at least to me, said nothing substantial.

"BEV sales outgrew the total market by nearly 40% (EV +34% YoY adj. vs. total market -5%). Tesla’s share of the BEV market declined significantly to 69% vs. 81% in the prior year. The Ford Mustang Mach-E accounted for nearly 100% of the share loss."

A 12% drop in market share while the market as a whole grew, and attributed to the Mach-E would seem pretty substantial to me.

Tesla’s market share has nowhere to go but down. Tesla’s sales could grow every year for a long, long time, while their market share can continue to go down. With virtually all car models slated to be electric in the future, Tesla should continue to see great growth, while progressively losing more and more market share as more models come out.

Sometimes new models become hot in the tech world. Many people in Silicon Valley jumped to the Jaguar E-Pace to get the new, different thing, but then jumped back. There is pent up demand for quality alternatives to Tesla, if for nothing else than just for variety, but also for quality control, service networks, etc.

My point is the article makes the situation sound dire for Tesla, but the statistics don’t reflect that. If they sold 100 cars every quarter (for easy math), but then Ford releases a new, hot model that sells 50 cars, that doesn’t mean anything to Tesla. Yes, they didn’t sell to 50 other buyers and yes, their market share went from 100% down to 67%, so it seems bad, but in the end, they sold the same number of cars and those new buyers may never have bought a Tesla, so it is what it is.

Yea, I agree with all you said, and you are absolutely right Tesla's market share has no where to go but down. Still, I was surprised to see that much of an impact attributed to the Mach E.

In the end, as I make my slow turn from "Hell no, no EV for me" to "Yea, I might buy one if the right one comes along" it's good to see that there is finally a model that is non-Tesla and is selling in good numbers.

OF course, the Bolt which gets ignored by the press for some reason, sells well (it was second behind the Model S in 2017) and sold over 20,000 units in the US last year also has taken a share of Tesla sales, in the same theory.

Yeah. In other countries, Tesla wasn’t the top selling EV. I believe we have discussed the VW ID3/4 selling well.

I can't be the only one that thinks the Polestar 2 looks pretty sloppy/bad.

Modern AMC Eagle 4x4 is what I see.

Well, that pretty much describes all the current crossover/SUV EVs doesn't it?

To me the Polestar 2 looks like a sedan sitting on top of a battery pack. It doesn't look like a ground up EV design at all (as far as integrating the battery pack into the design). Also AFIAK the 2 isn't even an CUV. Looks 100% like a sedan, no?

Great review.

In regard to the charging stations and the way they work, too bad there isn't a 100 year old method that was updated about 50 years ago to allow you to use credit cards to fill up your tank. I mean why use something simple when you can make it complicated?

Here is another:

https://youtu.be/MEqxaH47DTs