Re:Elon Musk Confronts a Fateful Tweet and an ‘Excruciating’...
by rayiner on Friday August 17, 2018 @10:57AM
(#17783285)
> 1) Oil was pretty expensive since 2005. 2) Everyone could capitalize on that. 3) Existing big car companies could finance R&D themselves. 4) According to Wikipedia, incentives started around 2011, way after Tesla was funded and probably before other car manufacturers started moving.
> The fact remains that none of the existing car manufacturers decided to even try to compete with Tesla until it was painfully obvious that Tesla's going to "make it" (i.e. Model S) and that consumers love their electric cars.
Again, your chronology is completely wrong. By the time the Model S came out, GM had already been selling the Chevy Volt for almost two years. And throughout both cars' run, the Chevy Volt has been selling at approximately the same volume as the Model S (both car sold 110-130k units through the end of 2017). The Nissan Leafs also came out in 2010, and more Leafs had been sold as of the beginning of 2018 than total Tesla vehicles.
To recap: other car manufacturers (GM and Toyota) were first to market with EVs, in the late 1990s. They were also first to market with mainstream popular EVs, in 2010, two years before the Model S.
You're just completely wrong on the chronology.
The federal tax credits were in place for the 2009 tax year: https://www.tesla.com/blog/tax-incentives-why-roadster-costs.... The Roadster was released in late 2008 (only 150 units shipped in 2008). Almost all of Tesla's capital raise came after 2010: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jimcollins/2018/04/25/a-brief-h....
> The fact remains that none of the existing car manufacturers decided to even try to compete with Tesla until it was painfully obvious that Tesla's going to "make it" (i.e. Model S) and that consumers love their electric cars.
Again, your chronology is completely wrong. By the time the Model S came out, GM had already been selling the Chevy Volt for almost two years. And throughout both cars' run, the Chevy Volt has been selling at approximately the same volume as the Model S (both car sold 110-130k units through the end of 2017). The Nissan Leafs also came out in 2010, and more Leafs had been sold as of the beginning of 2018 than total Tesla vehicles.
To recap: other car manufacturers (GM and Toyota) were first to market with EVs, in the late 1990s. They were also first to market with mainstream popular EVs, in 2010, two years before the Model S.