Why is it that I pay $7,500 more in federal taxes for riding my bicycle to work than someone who purchases a $70,000 luxury car? Why don't people who don't even own a car in the first place, and take the bus to work, get that tax credit? We're basically transferring wealth from the middle class to the wealthy by offering these sorts of tax credits (at least, in the case of Tesla; other manufacturers like Nissan are offering more affordable electric cars that are actually within the price range of the middle class).

By offering a tax credit to people who buy electric cars, yes, the average taxpayer is still funding Tesla.

Now, the carbon credits are another issue. I think that those are somewhat more reasonable; you are making the manufacturers of vehicles that have substantial negative externalities fund ones that have significantly less.

Again, though, I wonder why only other automobile manufacturers are able to sell these credits; it would be nice for, say, bicycle manufacturers, electric bike manufacturers, public transit systems, and municipalities which build infrastructure more suitable for living without cars to be able to sell credits as well. Only allowing automobile manufacturers to be in the game means that you are still supporting transportation that requires each individual person to haul around a couple of tons of metal with them for 20 or more miles a day, taking up lots of extra space for storing them both at home and at work, leading to congestion and the necessity for more money to go into infrastructure.

Secondly, the total cost of those tax credits is miniscule. We subsidize a lot of other much worse things a lot more. If you're going to get up in arms about tax subsidies, we'll be here all day.

Additionally, EV subsidies are not unique to Tesla. The only thing that was unique to them was the loan which they're paying back early. So bringing up the rest of it in an article ostensibly about Tesla is a bit misleading.

I think EV subsidies make sense, and I made the point of NASA for a reason. Sometimes when we have an important goal (interstate freeway, getting to the moon, moving the entire country over to electric vehicles) it's worth investing in.

You may disagree, and you can express that disagreement by writing to your local Congress critters and by voting.

Source? Everyone in this thread on the Tesla forum seems to think that you can still get the credit if you pay AMT: http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/showthread.php/9263-Is-7500-t...

And if you check IRS form 1040 http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040.pdf and its instructions http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040.pdf, you will see that the tax credit for electric vehicles is added to line 53, which is subtracted from your tax liability whether or not you paid AMT (line 45). AMT applies to taxable income, preventing you from claiming exemptions if your income is over a certain amount. Tax credits apply to your tax liability, which are subtracted after computing your tax and alternative minimum tax.

So yes, you get the tax credit no matter how wealthy you are.

> I think EV subsidies make sense, and I made the point of NASA for a reason. Sometimes when we have an important goal (interstate freeway, getting to the moon, moving the entire country over to electric vehicles) it's worth investing in.

I agree that EV subsidies are worthwhile, but I think that there are better places that we could apply subsidies, such as all of the other infrastructure improvements I suggested, and promoting low-car lifestyles rather than pouring all of that investment into alternative types of cars. But those other improvements aren't as sexy, because they frequently don't involve exciting new technologies but instead simple restraint, better planning, and investment in things that are associated with lower classes (busses, trains, dense urban planning), rather than upper and middle classes (sexy cars, suburban living).

And you know, another way for me to disagree is doing exactly what I'm doing here; trying to urge restraint of many people who think that Tesla is so amazing and so much the future that they lose sight of other, simpler, cheaper ways of solving the problems that Tesla is supposedly solving. There are an awful lot of people here who equate negative opinions of Tesla with being evil, backward thinking, luddites, while really, some people are just asking "is Tesla really profitable (as paying off the loan early might make you believe), or are they still making money off of the taxpayer and zero-emission credits paid for by other manufacturers? How long should the taxpayer fund toys for the wealthy in order to help bootstrap an EV manufacturing industry, as opposed to putting money into other, even more sustainable infrastructure improvements?"

I am sure that lots of people did moan about the money spent on NASA in the 60s and I am also sure that at least some of that money was 'wasted' (i.e. spent inefficiently). We should all be concerned about these kinds of issues, even if we like the programs.

Of course, I'm not saying there aren't better ways; I'd be curious what you might suggest?

And exactly what form should this concern take? Require a ballot initiative on every expenditure over $10,000?

Let's be realistic here.

Whenever you're doing something on a huge scale there are going to be inefficiencies and problems. We have to accept them up to a point.

Now that $8 billion that went missing in Iraq? That's probably something worth being up in arms about.

The small amount of money we're spending on EV credits? Not wasteful and not worth freaking out about. That program is working exactly as intended.

If we're talking about this program in particular, the Energy Department had the following to say: "losses in the $34 billion loan portfolio amount to about 2% of the total."

Even if that 2% is wrong, a loss of even a few billion compared to the entire portfolio of lending is minimal.

Now I'm not going to suggest that all government loans work, as picking winners in the private or pubic sector is very, very hard. But please before regurgitating a statement please back it up with some evidence or reporting on the matter.

WSJ content is behind a paywall. WSJ opinion pages are free. If you're a capitalist, and believe goods fetch their market value, that tells you all you need to know.

"Taxpayers pay first so Tesla can build the cars and again to help the wealthy buy them."

It turns out that anyone subject to AMT (my guess is a substantial portion of Tesla buyers) does not in fact qualify for the federal tax credit.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

It's quite telling that you're ignoring the billions/trillions we've wasted on useless projects since 1964.

Because it's not relevant to the discussion.