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Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
12/11/08
12/11/08
12/10/08
automakers need to learn to NOT MAKE OVERPRICED, IMPRACTICAL CARS!
the big names spend the past seventy years making huge, bloated, 6000lb cars and 10000lb suvs, dropping in gas-guzzling motors (in order to move all that weight), and when people opt to buy the cheap fuel-efficient import, automakers want the government to save them.
same goes for tesal: if you can't make it cheap, and if you can't make it practical, you don't deserve to make it at all. stop trying to piggyback off the taxpayer.
12/10/08
12/11/08
12/11/08
12/10/08
Ugh, such bad journalism (in general not you specifically) all around spreading this story with the "bailout" headlines.
Tesla is applying for the loan under the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Incentive Program of the DOE. The same one the Detroit 3 and Congress wants to carve $15 billion out of solely to bail the Detroit 3 out, with no regards to the original requirements of the loan.
Except one HUGE difference: Tesla's actually applying under the original terms of the loan, which was supposed "to encourage the development of energy- efficient vehicles" from the original article. And it's not going towards the $109k Roadster, but rather to build their $58k sedan, as you mentioned. Meaning it's not a bailout like the Detroit 3, rather it's just a standard application for an existing loan intended to encourage cleaner cars.
I'm sure they aren't the only ones that applied, just that they are getting most of the media coverage. The company doesn't need the money to run their existing business, but they do need it to build the factory for the sedan with the capital markets down the toilet recently, as we all know. In fact, I'm pretty sure there will be oversight to ensure the money doesn't get used to fund their existing Roadster business.
That's fairly important context to understand this story.
12/10/08
Still doesn't change the fact that Tesla hasn't delivered a single roadster to a regular customer. Tesla's just as likely to go belly up as they are to actually get the Model S on the road. (it doesn't help that you have an egomaniac, Elon Musk, at the helm of Tesla now)
12/11/08
Sounds like the name of a bad cologne from the 70's...
12/10/08
12/10/08
We're giving the Big Three a bailout for the same reason we gave the banks a bailout - because they are giant companies whose failure would destroy the global economy beyond repair.
It has nothing to do with making cars. Call us when you're "too big to fail"
Love,
The Congress
12/10/08
12/11/08
Across the United States, you will still find little factory towns. The town employs factory workers. The workers pay rents to landlords, buy food from grocers, eat meals at restaurants, watch movies at theatres, and send their kids to schools. The landlords, the grocers, the waiters and cooks, the theatre workers, the teachers and the bus drivers all benefit from the factory even though none of them are in manufacturing.
Rent "Roger & Me". It is Michael Moore's best movie. It shows what happens to a factory town when the factory shuts down. Flint, MI is filled with factory towns. It would be not only politically and fiscally unsound to allow an entire State to fall to the wayside, it would be cruel to the people of that State.
Too many people are injecting a bit too much emotion into whether the Big Three should get a bailout. It is emotionally satisfying to tell them to take a hike. But other than soothing one's moral outrage for a short time, it does little else other than ruin the economic future of a region, destroy the US' future viability in a major economic sector, and further vest our fate in foreign control.
China and India are major emerging markets for automobiles. It behooves us to have an automobile industry - not only for Americans - but also for the hundreds of millions of Indians and Chinese who are trading up from bicycles to autos.
Letting the Big Three fail is a stupid idea.
12/11/08
12/11/08
But let's not kid ourselves about Toyota and Honda. The are the largest donors to the delegation from Alabama, are Alabama's largest employer, and do not employ union workers.
A quick search of Google using "Toyota Union Labor" turned up this NY Times article on Toyota's fights against organized labor at its plants. While not as bad as WalMart, I'm not a fan of anti-union companies.
I'm going to be in the market for a car in the next few years. I might vote with my pocketbook and get a car from the Big Three. I don't shop at WalMart because of their union-busting and I don't know if I feel comfortable buying a car from a company with the same mentality.
12/10/08
12/10/08
12/10/08
Maybe if I save $20 per day every day before the release, I will have enough dough to buy one.
::panhandles furiously::
12/11/08
12/10/08
Why bailout cars when consumers can't buy them anyway? Tesla stick with what you got and pull your self out of the hole.
12/10/08
A $60,000 4 door electric sedan is much more realistic than a $109,000 2 door convertible. I agree they should pull themselves out, but then again, so should GM, Ford and Chrysler. But because our economy would crumble without those companies the bailout was given.
Tesla is asking for $350 MILLION not $18 BILLION. I feel that for the advancing of electrical technology, they should get it, especially for such a paltry amount. Hell the god damn Chevy Volt used $750 MILLION just for development.
12/10/08
Well I personally would like a bailout so I can better my life.
I think bailout companies just prolongs the inevitable...just like ask your parents for money, you spend it and a month later you go asking for more.
12/10/08
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