Tesla gets government loan assistantance to the tune of $465 million.

[mopho]

Originally Posted by fitfan

....who was sitting in who's lap?

Boo!

[TimMullen]

Originally Posted by Cardinal

Oh Tim, don't be so negative!

Don't mean to be negative, but I tend to like to think things through. The future "shortages" from electric cars was from an analysis that I read - talking about what it took to build up to manufacture electrical car components in large volume. Unfortunately most of the resources that we would need are either controlled by countries not necessarily "friendly" with the US, and/or they have their own economy ramping up and needing more and more resources (China for example). There's even a limited supply of the material needed to make the magnets for the electric motors (at least if they want them to be efficient).

The siwitch to electric cars might seem like a good thing, but the reality is that we could become even more dependant on foreign imports than we are now.

It's along the lines of "climate change". Everything now is to do what ever we need to do to keep things from changing. But not too many have actually looked at whether it would be a good thing on not. For instance, one change that a warmer climate may make is more productive farm land - a longer growing season and much more land advaialbe for farming. At the same time, "they" are predicting that, because of a growing world population, we will need to double the food production over the next 50 years. Just maybe, that "global warming" might be a good thing - people might be a couple of degrees warmer (or they move North), but they may have food in their stomachs.

Everything in this world is a system that has to meet many compromises. The compromises need to be examined for all possibilities, not just the wones that scare people with the big headlines.

[ocelotspot]

Well, if this is anything for you guys to think about...

there are 8 billion more people here today than there were in the 1800s

Simple formula of supply and demand. the more people living our life style the less stuff to go around.

SO. We need to keep africa, the middle east, and China (oops.) and most of the rest of the world living a different lifestyle

Lots more siblings at the dinner table

[mikeyd]

It seems to me that the Federal Government furnishing of loans to Tesla at this stage of the economic cycle is a perfectly reasonable fulfilment of its duties. I’m no economist but there are a great many corporations out there that will go bust because of the unavailability of working capital.
In recessions ‘The Market’ gets screwed up and that leads to pointlessly destructive instability, which governments possibly have a duty to mitigate. (Keynesian economics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
I personally don’t believe that Mr Musk is out to screw the US Government, he’s a very rich man and #ucking with Uncle Sam usually results in a lengthy prison sentence.
He has teamed up with one of the most innovative chassis and technology manufacturers in the world (LOTUS) and his Type S uses Lotus’s VVA architecture and will benefit from all the development that Lotus did with Zap for the drivetrain. Most of Tesla’s Type S is production ready because Lotus have made it so.
The technology needed to make the Type S useable and affordable is already out there and ready for mass manufacture, why not Tesla?
In my opinion a combination of Li ion batteries and Ultra capacitors (Electric double-layer capacitor - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ) and perhaps even in combination with a small fuel cell could easily give the Type S a 300mile range.
All the technologies exist but are not yet mass produced. Wasn’t $100 million of the loan for drive train production?
Mr Musk might be personably unlikeable but I reckon even I could suceed in doing what he is proposing - i.e. it's not too far fetched!
IMHO a silent luxurious family saloon that costs pennies to recharge and drives like a lotus will definitely sell 10,000 and it won't be long before he's exporting them to Germany - What a beautiful irony?

[JLSELISE]

Do you have a source for that info?
AFAIK Lotus has nothing whatever to do with the "Type S" and now that Daimler has a chunk of Tesa it seems likely that components for the car will be coming out of their parts bin.

[fitfan]

Originally Posted by TimMullen

Don't mean to be negative, but I tend to like to think things through. The future "shortages" from electric cars was from an analysis that I read - talking about what it took to build up to manufacture electrical car components in large volume. Unfortunately most of the resources that we would need are either controlled by countries not necessarily "friendly" with the US, and/or they have their own economy ramping up and needing more and more resources (China for example). There's even a limited supply of the material needed to make the magnets for the electric motors (at least if they want them to be efficient).

The siwitch to electric cars might seem like a good thing, but the reality is that we could become even more dependant on foreign imports than we are now.

It's along the lines of "climate change". Everything now is to do what ever we need to do to keep things from changing. But not too many have actually looked at whether it would be a good thing on not. For instance, one change that a warmer climate may make is more productive farm land - a longer growing season and much more land advaialbe for farming. At the same time, "they" are predicting that, because of a growing world population, we will need to double the food production over the next 50 years. Just maybe, that "global warming" might be a good thing - people might be a couple of degrees warmer (or they move North), but they may have food in their stomachs.

Everything in this world is a system that has to meet many compromises. The compromises need to be examined for all possibilities, not just the wones that scare people with the big headlines.

yeah but... if the earth does globably warm a "few degrees" - we are pretty much at epic destruction. not to sat we can't move our foundations of civilization to ...say.. denver...

we are wholey unprepared for mainstream EV's, we have an energy problem and EV's do not have anything to do with solving that problem - and more likely, as Tim says - it causes more problems. we need to mandate our building energy usage that constitues nearly 70% of electricity used in the US, and the bulk of waste and clean water consumption... then, everything is much eaiser to solve.

if there is a problem fix the issue, however no one is really interested in fixing the issues.

no wonder altanta/ga for example is facing it current problems? no one saw that coming 5 -10 years ago... yea... ev's will fix that! ha!

[Cardinal]

Originally Posted by TimMullen

Don't mean to be negative, but I tend to like to think things through. The future "shortages" from electric cars was from an analysis that I read - talking about what it took to build up to manufacture electrical car components in large volume. Unfortunately most of the resources that we would need are either controlled by countries not necessarily "friendly" with the US, and/or they have their own economy ramping up and needing more and more resources (China for example). There's even a limited supply of the material needed to make the magnets for the electric motors (at least if they want them to be efficient).

The siwitch to electric cars might seem like a good thing, but the reality is that we could become even more dependant on foreign imports than we are now.

It's along the lines of "climate change". Everything now is to do what ever we need to do to keep things from changing. But not too many have actually looked at whether it would be a good thing on not. For instance, one change that a warmer climate may make is more productive farm land - a longer growing season and much more land advaialbe for farming. At the same time, "they" are predicting that, because of a growing world population, we will need to double the food production over the next 50 years. Just maybe, that "global warming" might be a good thing - people might be a couple of degrees warmer (or they move North), but they may have food in their stomachs.

Everything in this world is a system that has to meet many compromises. The compromises need to be examined for all possibilities, not just the wones that scare people with the big headlines.

Scare tactics are the best way to push unrealistic agendas. There are too many people in power beating the drum of whatever is popular, without thinking through the nuts and bolts of reality.

All this talk of controlling the 0.384% of CO2 in our atmosphere is ridiculous; there will be another ice age regardless of what we do. They used to grow winegrapes in the British Isles. I wonder how that was possible?