Guest Post by Eric Peters
If Elon Musk’s various projects are so Iron Man fabulous, why do they all need so much government “help”? Shouldn’t Tesla – and Solar City and SpaceX – be able to stand on their merits… if they actually have merit?
Tesla fanbois – and Musk himself – will tell you all about the virtues of his electric cars. They are sleek and speedy. This is true. But they are also expensive (the least expensive model, the pending Model X, will reportedly start around $35k, about the same price as a luxury sedan like the Lexus ES350) and come standard with a number of significant functional deficits such as a best-case range about half that of most conventional cars and recharge times at least 4-5 times as long as it takes to refuel a conventional car.
That’s if you can find a Tesla “supercharger” station.
If not, then the recharge time becomes hours rather than half an hour.
But the real problem with Tesla cars is that no one actually buys them.
Well, not directly.
Their manufacture is heavily subsidized – and their sale is heavily subsidized.