Tesla Turning the Corner

If the product was really viable, big manufacturers would take a loss on the first 200,000 so the argument for creating the subsidy in the first place was just left wing economic nonsense.

What will sell more cars, to advertise "we're losing money on every car we sell, but we don't care" or "$XXXX off every car we sell, hurry, limited time offer!"

Rick C.

US car manufacturers refused to produced compact cars for years, until they lost enough market share to European and Japanese imports to realsie that they had to produce more or less compact cars, which rapidly got bigger.

US car manfuacturers can't be relied on to recognise commerical opportunies,let alone exploit them.

Reluctance to use the carrot of subsidy to get manufacturers to act in their own interest is right-wing economic nonsense.

Left logic is amazing. The government should subsidize BBQ potato chips because it sounds better.

US car manufacturers would prefer to sell the same car at ever increasing prices forever. Could probably make an argument that's the ideal state of most US manufacturers. Who the hell _likes_ innovating? It's expensive, frustrating, and time consuming!

US manufacturers _can_ be innovative when they have to be, but they don't do it because they love it or anything.

Innovating is not intrinsically profitable at all. In the final calculus it's probably a better deal to try to corner the market in product A and sell it for the same or more money forever than try to innovate product B. You're already all set up to make a shitload of A's anyway.

If someone else starts trying to sell product B in your neighborhood with enough money you can always buy the government to stop them. Also often a cheaper option they'll sell out for relative pocket change.

Tom Del Rosso finds the strangest messages in other peoples posts.

The post he is reactiong to is contrasting two possilbe advertising slogans .

There's no political content at all.

The argument for subsidisng electric cars is essentially that we are going to run out of oil eventually, so it makes sense to have a well developed el ectric car manufacturing base before oil gets too expensive to burn in cars .

The right doesn't like subsidising anything - unless it's via the miliary-i ndustrial complex - so they are happy to conflate utterly pointless subsidi es with subsidies which serve a useful purpose (albeit one that they cannot be bothered to understand, or in Tom Del Rosso's case, one that he is too ill-informed to comprehend).

I don't think many American right-wingers believe that will actually ever happen either. Either the supply is thought to be infinite or nearly so, that oil is actually generated by an abiogenesis process, that Jesus will come back soon enough anyway such that it doesn't matter, or that it won't happen in their lifetime so it doesn't matter.

Or take the Randian position that if we run out here the free market will force us to mine the moon, the asteroids, the gas giants, the whole solar system, all the solar systems, the entire Galaxy, the Universe, other Universes, and rule the multiverses as Gods.

it all sounds like a load of sci-fi egomaniac bullshit to me, frankly, of the type only the "everyone is jealous of me and trying to hold me back!"-sort of guy would really be big into.

There are different sorts of corners:

Yeah. That's known as a "coffin corner".

Contrary to popular opinions, Tier-1s don't have a great margin. You'd call it "infinitely close to zero".

Any supplier that gave the money back would be crazy, or more likely nonexistant. The request is itself dangerous.

The Musk empire is dynamically unstable. A small panic could grow to collapse.

company will have to pay a $230 million convertible bond in November,

reach $359.87."

That might do it.

cash-to-stay-afloat/

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Yes, this gives tremendous insight into Tesla's operations...

"It's not unusual for automakers to play hardball with suppliers. In fact, it's common for car companies to press suppliers for price concessions in a never-ending tug-of-war."

Yawn...

Rick C.

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, it's common for car companies to press suppliers for price concessions in a never-ending tug-of-war."

Tesla owes:

1. 5B to bond holders
2. 3B to suppliers
3. 1B to customers
4. 2B to tax payers
5. 50B to stock holders

and:

1. 100% of interest expenses to GM
2. 10% of sales to GM
3. 300% of labor costs to GM

Tax payers and stock holders do not need to be repaid, but others do.

Still thinking about Tesla stocks? Tax loss buying?

A company by any other name would have failed.

Agreed. ...but that doesn't mean I'm not concerned about exactly that happening.

Yep. The advance orders for the '3's were nonsensical.

We can only hope.

Moron. There is a difference between "price concessions" and demanding rebates on previous year's production.

I'm concerned they'll almost go under and then get a bailout.

They may get a "government bailout" but perhaps not from the American government if ya know what I mean

People will definitely get bailouts under the Trump administration, the idea seems to be to enact broad trade barriers that hurt just about all businesses to start and then they have to come begging hat in hand for government assistance to offset the impact of the tariffs, the administration then will get to pick and choose who gets largesses and who doesn't by how much they like them.

It seems quite a bit like socialism to me, a particular variant of socialism called national socialism.