Slow repairs in Norway hint at troubles as Telsa grows | Hacker News Reader

Slow repairs in Norway hint at troubles as Telsa grows

bloomberg.com

23 pointsilamont6 comments

"But as Norway aims to make all new cars sold in the country battery-powered by 2025—a target it will reach only with lavish subsidies paid for by sales of oil"

Comments like this are unnecessary and continue to perpetuate a false stereotype of Norway as some sort of naive smurf-land where everything is paid for by oil.

In reality electric cars have taken off in Norway due to well coordinated social policy, and a lack of undue corporate influence on government.

Electric vehicles such as Teslas are not in fact subsidised in Norway- however they are exempt from the high taxation levied on fossil driven vehicles.

Norway has high EV ownership due to punitive taxation, not subsidy. You can argue about whether or not this is a good thing.

What's the difference functionally between a tax on your competition (all except you) and a subsidy for yourself?

For one, in the first case the government revenue should grow rather than decrease.

For two, the taxes on one type of product may be justified by the societal costs of using that product. Compare for example cigarettes and chewing gum.

Well coordinated? Nah, it was a 10 year old policy that was enacted back when Think was the height of electric cars. This allowed all electric cars to travel in bus lanes and pay no tolls.

Something that blew up when the rich people got a new gull winged toy...

Keeping your customers happy is a problem a lot of startups are really bad at. The products may be great, but problems are inevitable. Sucky support might be okay for lifestyle products, but you can't get away with it if your customers really depend on it (cars, bank accounts, etc.).

While I've heard that Tesla is a responsible open source software contributor, their service manuals are the most hidden in the auto industry. This problem could be fixed without cost.

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