What would be really sad is if this policy change causes bankruptcies in renewable energy companies... it would take a while to rebuild that, even if the policies are restored later on.
What would be really sad is if this policy change causes bankruptcies in renewable energy companies... it would take a while to rebuild that, even if the policies are restored later on.
I think what OP is getting at is that Tesla isn't aiming for just that demographic. Musk has always wanted to produce his cars so that they are desirable to everyone.
Tesla has been explicitly thanking current buyers of Model S and Model X for doing their part providing cash for this environmentalist project. Elon's earliest statements admit that they can't compete on price as a startup. But they have been driving costs down rapidly and their philosophy as OP stated, is to be the best car available in all senses, and not rely on environmentalist good vibes for sales.
They already did this for acceleration, automation, and running costs. They still have some categories to go. But that doesn't invalidate the suggestion that their philosophy is about feature parity, as opposed to environmental charity.
At least out in my exurban area, upper middle class guys buy Teslas so they can race their sports-car in the carpool lane on the way to a middle management job.
I was looking up the numbers.. and was happy to see renewables cost being lower. But take a look at this 2015 report from the EIA: http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/archive/aeo15/pdf/electricity_g...
At the time at least, "clean coal" is more expensive than solar.. but if you eliminated the carbon capture requirement (ie: "conventional coal"), it significantly reduces the price, bringing it in under solar.
There is a 2016 version of this report.. but it gets rid of the conventional coal costs, because regulation prevents plants without carbon capture from being built. http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation....
Natural gas pushes the rest of coal out, with the benefit of being lower carbon impact and has the ability to throttle quicker before the evening peak when solar generation recedes. Wind and solar will of course continue to come down in cost, pushing out natural gas, with battery storage replacing the last of natural gas eventually.
According to the 2016 report, it's tax credits that brings solar PV within 5% of combined cycle plants. Without the credits it's 33% more expensive. (And this is for plants entering service in 2022.)
I understand nat gas may be better and a temporary win... but I think the future should be renewables, and I'm concerned about policy changes that could damage and set back progress with solar, etc.
If solar is only competitive because of tax credits, then solar companies may have significant losses if those credits are discontinued.
I have a CPA investigating how to use the ITC tax code to partner those with a tax liability to solar projects. You would estimate your tax liability, make a payment to the solar project, and their tax credit would then flow back to you when you file your taxes; whatever dollars you would've sent to the US government, you end up sending to a solar project instead.
If its doable, I'm putting a Django site together and starting to market it. The best renewable is the one that gets installed as soon as possible.
Fracking is an expensive way to get oil (compared to drilling), and we're near the break even price. The Saudis, who have been manipulating our politics for years by threatening to cut production to raise prices, have now started flooding the market with cheap oil in an effort to starve out both our fracking and our emerging electric car market.
Our response has been to pass a law making foreign nations liable for damages caused by their involvement in terrorism committed on US soil, and declassifying the 9-11 report, which shows enough Saudi involvement to open the door for a lawsuit. Considering how much they have in US assets, this could potentially be collected on. It's a threat. We're trying to pressure them into ending their flood of the market so prices will rise. The Saudis know it and have threatened to drop a trillion in US debt and holdings.
Say what you want about Trump's social issues, but he understands this kind of game. He's not going to expand a US product that is struggling to break even with intent to lower the sale price. He'll continue pressuring the Saudis to drop their production, oil prices will rise, and it will benefit both the US oil industry, and Elon Musk.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/sep/06/germany-extend...
The design of the EV tax credit is really bad.
The demise of Appalachian coal was mostly due to the rise of both natural gas and Wyoming coal, as well as exhaustion of readily available resources. Though Appalachian coal is higher grade, it requires expensive and dangerous mining practices such as room and pillar mining, mountaintop removal, or more traditional practices in increasingly small and geometrically complicated seams. The coal from Wyoming is basically at the surface and can be strip mined at scale very cheaply, with lots of automation.
Unconventional oil and gas production is also at odds with coal production. As you've said, oil can't get that much cheaper, and gas is pretty similar, and has more substitution with coal. Many of the restrictions on unconventional production (i.e. fracking regulations) are done at the state level, and given the concern over recent seismicity in associated with injection of post-fracking wastewater, the states probably won't budge that much. If as pro-oil a state agency as the Oklahoma Corporation Commission (the main regulatory agency in OK) is tamping down on production processes, there is very little a Trump administration can do to shift the needle.
Similarly, we (he) won't be able to simply deregulate and re-invigorate mining. Too much of the demand is based in China, and a trade war there will simply depress prices further. Additionally, many of the resources are in states that are not overly favorable to Trump, and the state EPAs have a lot of sway, especially in a more 'states rights' environment. Rare Earths, for example, are mostly found in the US near Las Vegas but across the state line in Mountain Pass, California. And NV isn't as red as it used to be either.
Lithium production could increase, but I think the problems there are there just aren't a lot of good sources, not environmental regulations. Lithium is tied up with salts or brine (salty water) from hypersaline lakes that dried up and concentrated metals that were already especially abundant due to particular geology. Lithium mining is often just pumping salty water out of aquifers or dredging it from lakeshores. It's not like copper or gold mining/processing that involves nasties like mercury and arsenic.
Trump's policies will probably mostly involve somewhat symbolic, macroeconomically insignificant, and locally damaging exploitation of currently off-limits areas like ANWR, offshore CA and the east coast, and possibly many of the new national monuments in the West that may have uranium or other metals.
Eliminating the tax incentives for renewables is also likely, but may not yield as much permanent damage as environmental degradation; some companies may lose market share or capitalization, some may bust, but this won't turn the tide.
This is completely illogical. Increased usage of coal or gas will result in higher prices of those resources, not lower.
In addition, switching back to coal and gas as electrical power sources means lower energy costs. Lower energy costs mean lower manufacturing costs, what will finally result in lower electric car/batteries and solar panels production costs.
Lower electricity costs will also result in lower operational costs of electric cars.
All they need to do is keep being focused on their primary business, instead buying SolarCity.