They are putting solar on their roof, batteries in their garage, buying renewable energy from their utilities, and driving Teslas.
Time to update our climate change framing.....
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Drove by a single family house in (wealthy suburb) recently and they had a Cadillac, Maserati, Ford F250 and a Tesla in the driveway.
Absolutely. But if driving the Tesla means they spend less time driving the Escalade, I think that's a small win.
Ashful
Minister of Fire
I didn't know there was such thing as "too much", when discussing disposable income. It's how you dispose of it that really matters, but it's hard to judge that based only by the cars someone has in their driveway. They may give the majority of their income to your favorite charity, for all we know.
True, that's why I didn't say always. I suppose the same could be said of the guy with a 1977 Pinto in the driveway.
walhondingnashua
Minister of Fire
This makes a point I have considered for a long time about things like switching to EVs and solar. If the powers that be really wanted it to be adopted, then they would make it affordable so more people... adopt it. The cheapest cars should be EVs. I do not mean this to be a political statement or a bash on capitalism, but this is just how I feel implementation of these kinds of changes do not happen correctly.
It gets kind of tricky because sometimes if there is a discount, rebate, etc., the manufacturers raise the price equally.
The "powers that be" do not have that much control over prices. The government does provide incentives and rebates as long as they think it'll get them reelected. Manufacturers always want their tech adopted, but they also want to make as much money as possible. Competing interests.
EbS-P
Minister of Fire
The $7500 tax credit is a big deal. The smaller credit for used EVs under $25k will be just as big in 12-18 months. new Toyota camery is about 30K. Same as a Model 3 RWD after the tax credit. Prices for EVs in 24-36 months will come down. Tesla just dropped the price of the base Model X to under 80k to qualify for the tax credit. One would imagine as they still have plenty of profit margin to play with on thier other models too. Colorado has a state EV tax credit of $5000! Will people want to buy EVs is the question. Local electric rates and gas prices will factor heavily in to the financial decision and there attractiveness of an EV
I’m not sure what solar prices will do. Labor is going up but I imagine materials will go down. I am almost to the point of thinking residential solar is not a good financial decision unless you have high power costs. So much can be done to reduce consumption. I will let the utilities build renewable power at large scales where it’s cheaper and they pass the cost and or savings on to me. Am considering a small 1-2 kw non grid tied system with a 4-10 kWh battery to power small appliances grow lights and pumps and a small mini split. Would serve as my back up power if the grid goes down. I would not expect the $$ return on that system, in the same way I would not expect a standby generator to save me money.
Ashful
Minister of Fire
While a good stretch from making EV's the cheapest option, I do I know a lot of people who bought Tesla's early on, specifically because of the rebates, and fear they'd expire before they were able to transition. Otherwise, they would have stuck with their ICE's.
Likewise, I know many in PA who have gotten residential PV systems, solely because of the rebates offered. These systems would be typically financially impractical, without such rebates.
Ashful
Minister of Fire
Yeah, that one had me scratching my head. The original incentives were sold to the public as giving each manufacturer a certain amount of "guaranteed sales", such that they could anticipate recouping a certain amount of their R&D investment in going into EV's. But by allowing Tesla to continue receiving rebates way beyond the initial 250,000(?) units that many of the legacy brands have not yet achieved, he's essentially giving customers more incentive to continue going with that one brand, while the others try to play catch up.
No excuses, I know the others should have moved more quickly to have been even ahead of Tesla, but that's Detroit.
GM and Nissan had also run through the original 250k unit sales if I recall correctly. Nowadays both Nissan and GM look to be bringing up the rear on EVs despite their early efforts. Nissan scaled back their efforts after their CEO Ghosn left in scandal (the LEAF was his pet project). And GM, despite building the EV-1 20 years ago, just bought the entire EV drive train for the Bolt from a Korean subcontractor, LG.
The US does incentives like this strangely, always with a cap or a sunset date. Like the solar and wind rebates were always on a two year horizon, and then needed to be renewed by the next congress every time. And it was on again, off again.
You could argue that when incentivizing a new industrial policy, or a new infrastructure, which require large scale investments over decade long periods of time, these small caps and two year sunsets seriously uncut the usefulness of the incentive in the first place.
This is why the IRA is so important... it has a 10 year horizon, and no caps on EV sales. As a result it will be both far more effective than the earlier incentives, and far more expensive. And restricted to 'mined, refined and made in the USA' or select 'friend-shoring' countries. Paid off with a combination of soak the rich tax increases and the usual smoke and mirrors.
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While I am no Tesla fan boy, Tesla DID drive the EV transition to the current tipping point. Not with the launch of the Model S in 2010. The Volt and LEAF were launched at the same time, and sold in similar volumes (with lower prices and margins). The change came when production of any EV was first scaled to that of a normal ICE model. That was the Tesla model 3, in 2018. After production was first scaled in Fremont, that line was replicated in Shanghai, Germany, and then in Texas.
Compared to the compliance cars of the 2010s typically selling 10-20k units per year, Tesla scaled the model 3 production to 250k units per year in 2018, 500k units in 2019 and more than 1 million units/year by 2021. And the Model 3 became the best selling car model in several regions (including Germany, France and California) once they became widely available. The first BEV to 'top the charts' against ICE models. But it wouldn't be the last.
Tesla Model 3 - Wikipedia
The Model Y is on its heels now... it sold 750k units in 2022, and surpassed the Corolla to be the best selling car model globally in Q1 2023.
During my daily commute, I see lots of model 3s and model Y's. Probably more than Priuses, and comparable to Corollas.
To its credit, VW has also scaled production of EVs, with an early build out of plug-in hybrids. PHEVs had a great EU rebate incentive, and were widely sold as 'company cars' in Germany and the EU. This was a bit of a boondoggle, bc the car owners all had a free gas card courtesy of their company, but were not reimbursed for charging at home! So very few of those plug-ins were ever charged off the grid. But it did help VW to get its EV effort scaled, and they switched to BEVs with the ID.x series. VW sold >100k ID.4s worldwide in 2021, and >150k in 2022.
Beyond Tesla and VW, the only makers scaling production are Chinese startups like BYD, that are getting huge incentives from the CCP.
In comparison, GM and Ford both sold well below 100k total BEVs in 2022 and 2023, but spent a TON on advertizing in the US both years.
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In conclusion, the old $7500 rebates were great. I got those 2x, on a 2013 LEAF and a 2017 Bolt. But as an inustrial policy, they did little but spawn the production of a small selection of low volume compliance cars as 'science projects' by the legacy makers. And much of the money went to foreign makers (Nissan, VW, BMW. Kia/Hyundai) or to foreign subcontrators (LG) and ultimately led to growth in the lithium supply chain in China as a result.
The IRA incentives, with their much hated domestic restrictions, are coming after the EV tipping point (due to Tesla, mostly after the earlier rebates had ended for them), and are both forcing the reshoring of production and supply chains, and are pulling mass EV adoption forward, having real impact on future CO2 emissions.
It should be noted that the tax credit only applies to a select group of vehicles. Likewise, state tax credits or exemptions may only apply to a specific price range of vehicles. Together, they narrow down the choices considerably. Tesla wins because they are made domestically and they have cars below $55K.
Ashful
Minister of Fire
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