Regulations goal is to reduce CO2 output. If a private company want to achieve that by funding a foreign electric car company to create a reduced total footprint, that’s their choice.
Ultimately the regulation achieves its goal, reducing CO2. That fact it’s done by increasing competition in the automotive industry can only be seen as an extra win.
Maybe that regulation is stupid and it causes the wrong incentives? If you wanted more electric cars, there are plenty of ways of making them more appealing thus creating a market for them. Like improving charging infrastructure.
Putting a gun to the head of one if not the largest manufacturing industry on the continent is pretty stupid way of doing so.
> That fact it’s done by increasing competition in the automotive industry can only be seen as an extra win.
Yeah great, us europeans will all be thrilled by the increased foreign competition and dead local manufacturers who have EU regulation burdens and foreigners who don't.
Additionally have you seen how small Tesla is compared to someone like VW? They’re easily an order of magnitude smaller.
Finally if Tesla are building in the EU then they’re contributing to the EU manufacturing industry, and they’re beholden to EU regulation.
Well shooting yourself in the foot is a pretty bad way to achieve those goals.
> Additionally have you seen how small Tesla is compared to someone like VW? They’re easily an order of magnitude smaller.
A US company benefiting from much looser regulation at home and most of all the insane FED money printing making its way to the stock market and funding them with free money.
> Finally if Tesla are building in the EU then they’re contributing to the EU manufacturing industry, and they’re beholden to EU regulation.
So we can all be factory workers for americans. Great.
You’re going to have to explain why this is shooting ourselves in the foot. I’m still not seeing it.
> A US company benefiting from much looser regulation at home and most of all the insane FED money printing making its way to the stock market and funding them with free money.
I’m not entirely sure I understand what your trying to say. Which regulations are so much looser and can you explain what advantages they provide to Tesla vs an EU company.
> So we can all be factory workers for americans. Great.
EU companies own factories in the US (VW is a notable example), and US companies own factories in the EU. Nothing wrong with that.
No, the goal is not to reduce CO2, it is to eliminate it entirely, and in order to do that one of the things you have to do is convert all auto transportation over to electric cars. But I bet you already knew that.
Maybe instead of picking a technology you should manage to the target you actually want. The target could in theory be reached with Hydrogen cars and perhaps that would be better — shame if they’d regulated for electric.
(Actually I think hydrogen is an absurd transport fuel, and California’s hydrogen power funding a waste. But the principle holds)
California gave hydrogen funding in order to give them a fair shot. No fair declaring after the fact that it was a waste.
Tesla is also subject to EU regulation. The emission regulations concern cars sold in Europe, no matter whether the company selling them is headquartered in Europe or not. It's just that in this case they're more compliant with the regulation than Fiat.
So I guess this isn't so much a footgun moment as a whole series of them.
I wouldn't call it a foot gun moment but it does feel somewhat like a faustian bargain.
In this specific case a small foreign company (and Tesla is tiny compared to the likes of VW) gets a leg up. I don’t think it have much impact of EU automotive industry in the long run.
Check the market cap.
Does it though?
Instead of Fiat reducing their product's CO2 emissions, isn't it actually the case that they've just done some fancy accounting and now say their emissions are lower because the paperwork now says Tesla is part of their fleet?
Tesla were going to make those cars anyway, so really Tesla gain the free money from Fiat, and Fiat keeps making polluting cars, and we all get to suffer the consequences of no actual reduction of CO2 because ultimately nothing has changed apart from some paperwork that follows the letter of the law rather than the spirit?
Doesn't seem that great to me.