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Comment by tachyonbeam | Hacker News Reader

I've been a Tesla shareholder since 2016, and I think the German government is right. I sincerely hope Tesla drops this, not just in Germany but worldwide.

The question isn't "is anyone fooled by this anyway?", it's "why is Tesla using deceptive practices?". IMO, they should feel free to point out cost savings somewhere, but they should not fudge guestimated values into the first price they show you. It's not just tacky, it's bullshit. Energy cost and tax savings vary by region and based on your individual situation, your driving habits, etc. Tax refunds do not affect the cost you have to pay for a car upfront. Elon Musk is an engineer at heart, and I feel like he should know better. Doing things like this loses them the respect of a lot of people.

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I personally feel like pricing in tax refunds into the displayed cost of the car is fair game, but pricing in gas savings is bullshit.

Tax refunds is money I'm definitely going to get back in a bounded (and reasonably short) amount of time. If I pay $40k for a car and get $7k back in the same year, it seems reasonable to advertise the cost as $33k (assuming it's clear that $7k of that is a tax refund).

But gas savings feels like bullshit -- it's money I may or may not get back (depending on my habits), the time horizon is unbounded, and even if it were bounded, it's long (an order of multiple years). That feels deceptive to me, and it's surprising they got away with it until now.

I'm not sure you can rely on tax refunds either.

For example, if you buy the car in your name and then you lose your source of income (whatever reason, e.g. health, maternity/childcare) and for example you rely only on your spouse's income, I know at least one country where you can't pass the tax benefits to the other person (not even by transferring ownership of the car)

In the US, the federal tax credit is a "credit" rather than a refund. That means that if you don't pay enough federal taxes in that year, you won't be saving the listed amount. Many state rebates don't work like this, but in some sense it is still misleading for Tesla and other electric vehicle manufacturers to not make this clear.

Do those credits not carry over to the next year?

They do not carry over for personal use. A business can carry them over.

Hello Uber and Lyft!

How many people can afford a Tesla while not having $7k of federal tax liability?

The same way “students” and “homemakers” sometimes buy multimillion dollar properties: offshore money (laundering).

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