for all the tax dollars that you are giving them in subsidies and fighting wars in the middle east?

Obviously Tesla is not competing directly with $15K cars.

The Model S competes against other $80K cars. They didn't invent that market segment--they are competing within it. Yes, that is a premium luxury segment.

By all accounts, the Model 3 will be somewhere in the $35-45K range. There are already cars selling for that price--that segment already exists, and it is much larger than the $80K+ segment. Again, Tesla will compete more or less head-on against similarly priced vehicles that already exist. You can call that a luxury segment if you want, but the average price of a new car is $32K so there are a lot of people buying cars for that price.

When competing against cars that are approximately the same price (within 20% or so), one could make an argument about the long-term savings of energy costs and maintenance for an ICE vs. EV.

Literally no one on the entire fucking planet is arguing that you can save money with a Model 3 vs. the cheapest gas car you can find. That is an entirely fictional argument that you've constructed inside your delusional little mind. It's completely absurd on its face, since by that logic there should be noone purchasing *any* car over $15K and yet the average price of a new car is $32K.

VW sells cars for $35K+ (their CC line, for example). Now I'm going to talk really slowly so you can try to keep up. Imagine if the people who already buy those cars instead start to purchase Model 3's for about the same price. Is your mind blown?

That's exactly what happened with the Model S. It's not that people who were in the market for a $35K car and instead bought an $80K car--it's that people were in market for an $80K car chose the Tesla over other $80K cars.

It is irrelevant that there are other cars that are much cheaper--Tesla isn't selling into that segment yet. They will get there, just not in the next couple years.

Why are you having such a hard time following the argument?

There are a lot of different market segments in the auto industry. The Model S is extremely competitive in the high-end luxury sedan segment where cars regularly sell for $80K+. The Model 3 will be targeted at the $35-40K midrange sedan segment, a segment in which hundreds of thousands of cars are sold right now (BMW, Audi, Volkswagen, etc.)--the Model 3 will be sold at a similar price-point as those other cars.

Eventually electric car technology will ripple down into economy segments. That's how new technology works. In the mean time maybe you can try to wrap your head around the fact that your needs are not everyone's needs--i.e., not everyone is in the market for a 1999 honda civic.

So there's a good example of a vehicle costing more than the vehicle it replaces.

Tesla is building out a high-speed charging network and funding R&D for a mass-market $35k electric car.

yawn.

seriously.

1. Apple is a $700B company with >$100B in cash. Think about that for a moment. They could purchase Tesla ($25B) and GM (~$60B) without so much as taking out a loan.

2. Tesla has already shown that you don't need dealerships to sell cars.

It's just that simple.

Capitalism is decentralized and adaptive. It incentivizes innovation and productivity, both of which benefit the entire country. It attracts the best talent from around the world. Capitalism will beat communism (or any sort of heavily planned economy) pretty much every time, it much better optimizes for human biology (humans try harder out of greed and stop trying when someone hands them stuff for free). The US won the cold war with capitalism.

Apple manufactures more computers in the US than anyone else does (Mac Pro line).

That's probably why.

I haven't been following the story but I assume GT signed it because they were forced at gunpoint--otherwise you would be blaming the idiots who signed a bad contract.

It's all about socialization, that's pretty important at that age (at any age, really).

Generally you can find some sort of part-time kindergarten (half days or alternate days), that's a nice way to ease into the school system for your wife and your child. Don't underestimate the difficulty for your wife--but ultimately it is better for both of them to spend some time apart.

If after a year or two you decide to homeschool for awhile, then that's totally fine.