It's silly to shun emissions credits that are desperately needed to electrify transportation considering the trillions of dollars of subsides petroleum has received and the severity of climate change. The market for an underpowered hybrid like the Prius is not the same as a market for an EV with no compromises (how does one compare a Model 3 to a Prius?).
Any automaker gets ZEV credits and federal tax credits for their EVs sold, Tesla is the only automaker selling EVs people want to buy (in quantity). Tesla has already sold more Model 3s in a quarter than Chevy has sold Bolts ever. So why is Tesla the one selling hundreds of thousands of EVs per year and no one else is?
"How dare Tesla take advantage of these regulatory and market advantages anyone else could be taking advantage of!" /s
Sorry to hear that's your opinion! Besides waiting a bit longer to Supercharge vs getting a tank of gas (which is rare, only when traveling, I charge at home every night), my experience has been much better with a Tesla than any internal combustion vehicle I've owned.
That's not really the only compromise Tesla has. It got terrible ergonomics, lack of what is now isn't considered particularly luxury features, mediocre build quality, repairs that can take months etc. But it got fart jokes! So it all evens out. /s
For my personal usage, when I am traveling (which usually is something like driving 2000 miles with a single long stop) filling/charging time makes all the difference between getting there how I want it or not, too.
You might have a point if there wasn't any demand, but Tesla is shipping almost 360k vehicles a year (and Gigafactory 3 in China is about to turn up). Someone likes the cars they build.
Very, very few people use their car as you describe (2000 miles in a single sprint). If you must perform such a trip, most will fly or rent a car just for that trip.
Oh, of course there is demand, that's quite obvious. (Well, there was demand for Juicero, too, for a while)
Not too many people might use the car exactly like that, and I do it only when I actually need to get the car there. Otherwise flying is more pleasant. But there are quite a few use cases where recharge/refuel time, usually for people who need cars to make a living.
Personally, I just will not, ever, buy anything from Musk, because I think that he is a terrible (even by SV standards) person, but yeah, sure, Teslas obviously work for some people. But saying that they are the bestest, uncompromiziest, never before had the world seen anything as awesome super-vehicles is just ridiculous.
If anything, driving across Southern US, even if you are on a leisurely road trip, in a car with cooled seats (a $30K Hyundai works) is far more pleasant than in a car with fart jokes.
It's silly to shun emissions credits that are desperately needed to electrify transportation considering the trillions of dollars of subsides petroleum has received and the severity of climate change.
It's disingenuous to claim that subsidies for petroleum are remotely the same thing as subsidies for EVs. You're comparing corn to apples here. The proper comparison would be subsidies for renewable energy like solar and wind to subsidies for petroleum, since in both cases the subsidies are indirect to the market that's were talking about: automobiles.
It's also disingenuous to claim that subsidies stretching out over a century, and partially rooted in global geopolitical politics, are the same thing as subsidies that have been around for about a decade.
Finally, it's disingenuous to cite the "trillions" of subsidies worldwide for petroleum while leaving out the hundreds of billions of subdisidies that green power like solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, and nuclear have received worldwide.
Tesla has already sold more Model 3s in a quarter than Chevy has sold Bolts ever....So why is Tesla the one selling hundreds of thousands of EVs per year and no one else is?
The Chevy Bolt is supply-constrained; total global production is 30,000 vehicles a year. There are currently waitlists at every dealership selling a Bolt. Competing EVs like the iPace are similarly supply-constrained and also have months-long waiting lists. Unlike Tesla, other automakers launch models slowly and scale up production as demand proves itself and production hiccups reveal themselves and are addressed. Last I checked, there's no months-long waiting period to get a Chevy Bolt fixed because (a) they don't need fixing straight out of the factory like so many Teslas do and (b) the supply of repair parts is readily accessible due to Chevy's mastery of basic automobile logistics...
Any automaker gets ZEV credits and federal tax credits for their EVs sold, Tesla is the only automaker selling EVs people want to buy (in quantity). Tesla has already sold more Model 3s in a quarter than Chevy has sold Bolts ever. So why is Tesla the one selling hundreds of thousands of EVs per year and no one else is?
"How dare Tesla take advantage of these regulatory and market advantages anyone else could be taking advantage of!" /s