Teslas Suddenly Get Pricier . . .

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Tesla announced the other day that it will no longer be producing the least-expensive version of its Model S sedan – which lines up with Tesla’s failure to produce many (f any) of the lower-priced versions of its constantly trumpeted Model 3.

It’s a hint about how one of the biggest problems with electric cars – their being too expensive for most people to consider, so long as their are less less expensive options available – will be handled.

We’ll all just pay more – because their won’t be any less expensive options.

And not just at Tesla stores.

As “electrification” gallops ahead – every major car company is practically on a war footing, frantically rushing as many EVs to market as they possibly can and retiring as many non-electrified models as they possibly can – the price of EVs will necessarily go up as the option to avoid them diminishes.

It’s genius.

Everyone inside the business knows quite well that electric cars are not going to get cheaper – or rather, become affordable – anytime soon and quite probably never. Because the technology just costs more. The chirpy stuff you hear about battery costs going down is true – just not honest.

Yes, batter costs have come down. They are still nowhere near cost-parity with an equivalent internal combustion layout. Which means even with subsidies in perpetuity – which GM and other major car companies now want Congress to rubber stamp – most people still won’t freely buy an EV so long as they can freely buy something that will cost them literally thousands (if not tens of thousands) less to own.

That’s italicized for the sake of clarity – and editorial honesty – which you’ll not find much of in general media accounts of the electric car. These accounts will convey the truth that EVs don’t cost much to drive – and may even cost less to drive than an equivalent non-EV. At least so long as electricity is not taxed the same as gas and the utilities don’t jack up the price as a result of a massive uptick in demand (because of a massive increase in EVs) which will require investment in new generating capacity – which isn’t free or even cheap.

But they sotto voce the EV’s ownership costs – which include not only its much higher initial cost (even with subsidies and rebate kickbacks) but also its higher long-term costs, which includes the inevitable replacement of several thousand dollars worth of batteries and the likely inherently shorter service life of the EV itself, due to the inherently greater complexity (and cost) not of the electric motor (which is relatively simple) but the myriad peripheral systems, especially the electronic ones, without which the thing is a brick.

Most non-EVs can be counted on to go 15-20 years and at least 150,000 miles before they get to the “not-worth-fixing” point

The economically viable life of an EV is much shorter – around 8-10 years or less.

A barometer of this – a canary in the coal mine – is EV depreciation. Which makes Solyndra stock look like a sound investment. You can find less-than-five-year-old Nissan Leafs (the most “affordable” EV on the market, at just under $30,000) for less than $10,000.

EVs will need to be replaced more often than non-EVs, another cost tsunami almost no one in the business wants to talk about publicly because they’ve invested so much in EVs; they are like the guy who knows he has high blood pressure but refuses to take his meds or even cut salt out of his diet – and goes to the Chinese buffet for a gorge.

The average car buyer has no clue because he knows little about EVs and isn’t being told the full story. The hope – the plan – is to get him into an EV before he does know it and then give him no way to get out.

Tesla knows it can’t make money – even with the subsidies – on the “affordable” $35,000 Model 3 (and the “affordable” $76,000 version of the Model S) so it won’t sell them anymore.

If you want a Tesla S, you’ll pay $94,000 for it.

The Model 3 you can actually buy costs $44,000 to start; with options, it goes for $60,000-plus. At least you can pick a color other than black (the only color available with the $35,000 Model 3, which isn’t available).

Other brand EVs will cost you, too – because within just a couple of years, as “electrification” proceeds – there will be fewer and fewer opt-outs. Almost no mainstream press car journalist is writing about or talking about the fact that the federal government’s “fuel economy” fatwa has become a de facto electric car production fatwa.

The fatwa prescribes a mandatory minimum of 50-plus miles-per-gallon for every car built – to be achieved by model year 2025. Google around and see how many 2019 cars achieve even 40 MPG that aren’t at least partially electric (i.e., hybrids).

Compliance with the fatwa effectively requires mass production of EVs – and the discontinuation of alternatives to them. Both for the practical – mathematical – reason that the more EVs and the fewer non-EVs, the higher your “fleet average” MPGs and thus, Uncle is appeased. And also because to get people into EVs, you must  get them out of non-EVs – which most people will continue to choose, so long as they have the choice.

Thus, eliminate the choice.

Non-EV alternatives won’t be outlawed. They’ll just kind of go away. In the same way that affordable large sedans with rear-wheel-drive and V8s went away (also because of the fuel economy fatwa).

The next step is to make the rest go away, leaving the $44,000 (to start) EV as your only choice.

The car companies see this – though they’ll never admit this – as the way to fluff their profit margins. Which it will, so long as the debt necessary to keep the carousel running can be underwritten, pawned off and (ultimately) written off.

But unlike the federal government – which can float apparently limitless debt – the average American cannot. At some point – probably not far distant – the bill for all of this will come due.

And it won’t be Uncle (or the shyster banks) who pays the tab.

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Trapped in Portlandia
Trapped in Portlandia

Sounds like we are on the path to the left-wing, new urbanist, planners wet dream. Get people out of cars (because they can’t afford them) and force them to live in cities and take public transit or walk or ride a bike. Want a weekend in the country, then you will rent an EV that can only go a couple hundred miles or take the bus. Want to go further than the range of an EV, then get on a bus or fly with everyone else.

Sounds like the dystopian urban life of Blade Runner. I can’t wait.

Pequiste
Pequiste

Irrespective of what happens to those Mus-kars, Elon is smiling all the way to the bank. That’s because his government-funded rocket program continues unabated and the Lumpen taxpayers will wind up picking up the tab for his ventures into automobile land.

For Elon its a win-win. For everyone else – STFU.

BB
BB

His space company is a fraud . There is no space . Just low earth orbit.We never landed on the moon . It’s all bullshit lies.
Go watch ” A funny thing happened on the way to the moon ” Start there . This earth is not spinning 1000 miles per hour flying thru space at another Godzillion miles an hour. The earth is not a Global ball. And on and on with the lies.

RiNS

must be scary looking up in the sky for you…

Stucky

“There is no space . Just low earth orbit.”

So, when the Gospels say that Jeebus “ascended into heaven” ….. what that REALLY means is that Jeebus is really really close by. Like, maybe he’s hiding behind the Space Station?

Got it.

(I’m gonna hafta go back to theology skool.)

RiNS

comment image

TampaRed
TampaRed

those bears are hungry,change your attitude & pray he has a sense of humor–

RiNS

I’m not worried….

Mr. Big in Valhalla has a wicked sense of ….
humour,
[ed. spelling of the werd right by the way…]

Proof you ask… well

Lord Odin has this covered and sent Jesus to the Carolinas to take the wheel for My lil Trucker Buddy Beebs .
Cuz he needs help.
He’s a working Man
Who has had enuf.

I found this old movie that he starred in…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZvgiQEF5Jw

back when he wasn’t quite so lucky.

who knew..

Iska Waran
Iska Waran

He was rising up and then it was like on Star Trek when Scotty beams you somewhere.

22winmag - Q is a Psyop and Trump is lead actor
22winmag - Q is a Psyop and Trump is lead actor

TESLA a black hole financial CIA slush fund posing as a car company.

mileswmathis.com/musk.pdf

Llpoh
Llpoh

22 – you are overestimating your IQ. I googled up your hero Mathis. This is the assclown that says pi = 4. This is the asshat that says if the earth were denser, you would weigh less. This clown believes therevwas no Boston Marathon bombing, and that Lincoln was not assassinated. He says Stephen Hawking died and was replaced by an imposter, and that John Lennon is still alive.

Among the people Mathis has accused of being Jewish are Jack Nicklaus, C.S. Lewis, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte and Pierre-Simon de Laplace.

You are a total imbecile. What a nutjob you have to be to post anything by this lunatic.

TampaRed
TampaRed

at least he’s warning us about the air bags,give him credit–
jack nicklaus,it makes sense now why he only played lighted tournaments,so he could play sat night instead of sat during the day–we all believed the dirty jew when he said he couldn’t play during the day because of his paleness–
cs lewis,all those books he wrote,all so he could make jewish filmmakers rich–
lincoln was not killed,that’s why the 2nd actor theory was put out,so as to distract the public & sara while abe sailed to cuba w/his boyfriend–

mathis is correct about one thing,i do believe that intel agencies have most internet sites infiltrated–

22winmag - Unreconstructedsouthernerbygraceofgod
22winmag - Unreconstructedsouthernerbygraceofgod

What blew my mind and gives me confidence in Miles’ writing is the first 4 pages of his Marx paper.

Who else illustrates in fine detail how the NRA’s former President was a globalist intelligence hack? I knew there was something rotten with the NRA, but Charlton Heston? Is nothing sacred??

Grog
Grog

Maybe you should rename him 11 ?

Anonymous
Anonymous

oh BB…i’m curious what your explanation is for the multitude of these publicly avilable videos

or that you’re proposing that the myriad of missions which you can follow in real-time here https://eyes.nasa.gov/eyes-on-the-solar-system.html
are all ‘fake’?

what a riot.

(the framerate is fucked with on this upload so it hasn’t been deleted yet. get yourself a real copy of this movie and EDUCATE THYSELF)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW4xo3mJB_4

22winmag - Unreconstructedsouthernerbygraceofgod
22winmag - Unreconstructedsouthernerbygraceofgod

Yes all faked, just like the Apollo saga.

22winmag - Q is a Psyop and Trump is lead actor
22winmag - Q is a Psyop and Trump is lead actor

The less sand-nigger Arabic words like FATWAH that enter common usage in American English the better!

And folks, never disable the airbags in your car because Eric Peters says you can and should be free to do so! The seatbelts in newer cars stretch more than the old-non airbag seatbelts in order to lessen injury from the belt and PROPERLY position you for airbag deployment. Without a functional airbags, the belts won’t properly restrain you. Don’t disable them and if the warning light is on- get it fixed!

Musk and Tesla: Another fake billionaire/fake CEO/BUSTOUT company created by intelligence as a giant financial slush pond. mileswmathis.com/musk.pdf

Llpoh
Llpoh

22 – you are overestimating your IQ. I googled up your hero Mathis. This is the assclown that says pi = 4. This is the asshat that says if the earth were denser, you would weigh less. This clown believes therevwas no Boston Marathon bombing, and that Lincoln was not assassinated. He says Stephen Hawking died and was replaced by an imposter, and that John Lennon is still alive.

Among the people Mathis has accused of being Jewish are Jack Nicklaus, C.S. Lewis, Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte and Pierre-Simon de Laplace.

You are a total imbecile. What a nutjob you have to be to post anything by this lunatic.

22winmag - Unreconstructedsouthernerbygraceofgod
22winmag - Unreconstructedsouthernerbygraceofgod

Sure, he’s my new favorite writer.

His facts are laid out in fairly plain English, verifiable, interlocking, and generally prima facie.

Put your money where you mouth is, take his paper on Musk/Tesla (it’s a really easy one to grasp) and refute it for me in any substantial way.

http://mileswmathis.com/musk.pdf

There is a reason there are 17 intelligence agencies in the US alone. Intelligence runs the world on behalf of the people who write their paychecks.

Llpoh
Llpoh

22 – any fuckwit that says pi = 4, that Lincoln was not assassinated, that the Boston bombing never happened is a fucking fuckwit, and any asshat that thinks he is someone to listen to in any way is a moron.

Musk is a shyster. Even a blind pig finds an acorn once in a while.

I scanned the link. What a load of shit. Are you insane? And I mean that literally. This fuck has zero evidence of anything. Seriously, get help. You are in trouble.

fully automated luxury gay space communism
fully automated luxury gay space communism

unpossible! amerika’s richest african-american wouldn’t lie to us like that, would he?

Boat Guy
Boat Guy

With all this socialist crony capitalism floating about as the next thing to be shoved down the American taxpayers throat and the bill for it shoved up the taxpayers ass simultaneously regarding the joy of electric vehicles how can we resist ?
The soldier played by Kurt Russell had the line that fits the best : I’m going to kill them all sir !
I want a 1968 GMC pickup with a straight stick in line six that belches noxious fumes and drops a carbon footprint the size of a Sasquatch you left wing sorry mother fuckers ! Just the way lefties like to talk …!

TampaRed
TampaRed

where is star tonight?

Tom
Tom

Consider that “Agenda 2030” and “sustainability” mean that the Progressive elites believe that this is a good thing — making personal transportation less affordable (if not unaffordable for many to most) will prompt a Cass Sunstein inspired “nudge” to force people out of suburbs and close-in to urban cores and mass transit. Without realizing that they were socially engineered into this much lowered standard of living.

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