Mods: Troll != Disagree

Well, the companies buying the credits don’t have to. They could just produce EVs instead. But yes, your general point that it is a regulatory requirement is accurate. I don’t think you will get any argument that it is not a viable long-term strategy. I also don’t think there is any evidence that Tesla intends it to be. As of Q42020 the credits amounted to less than 20% gross revenue IIRC. Clearly there is still a need to sell more cars with better margins, but they seem to be getting there.

Neither is socialism and you know it, so stop pretending otherwise.

You said,

You are clearly trying to equate tax rebates to socialism, which it isn’t. If you have an argument to make against tax rebates, make it, without resorting to vapid sophistry.

Thank you. CNN pretends they are the first people to make this argument. You can’t sell emissions credits if you don’t produce EVs. So saying the profit doesn’t come from selling EVs is as absurd as saying a car dealer selling extended warranties is profit that doesn’t come from selling cars.

So tax credits == socialism to you? Interesting that the definition of socialism can change so easily to suit any particular political argument.

There are reasonable arguments for and against giving companies tax rebates as incentives to invest in the local economy. There are examples like the Foxconn factory in Wisconsin and the second Amazon headquarters that were clearly bad. But some can be quite good and serve to really inject a stimulus in the local economy. There was nothing in Sparks, NV before Tesla built their first Gigafactory there. Today it has become a fairly large suburb of Reno. It’s a bit early to tell, but the deal with Texas also seems to be negotiated well.

From https://techcrunch.com/2020/07...

She was one of the first authors I read as a child and is how I got started in science fiction/fantasy lit. She is not well known because it has always been hard to get her books. I remember waiting 3-4 years before we were able to get all of the books for the Wizards Apprentice (originally called Circle of Magic, no idea why they changed it) series. They were variously out of print for a long time. I have them all now and we have held onto them over the years because, even now as an adult, I still enjoy picking them up and reading them occasionally.

  I introduced them to my daughter who really enjoyed them too. They are a different kind of fantasy novel. They are not epic like Tolkien or deep into world building like so many others. It’s really more of a coming of age story, which is what makes it great for young audiences, and it borrows heavily from traditional medieval literature, so it is very different stylistically as well.

Well yes, the use of a trailing separator to indicate precision is more of a convention, but that is because the use of trailing zeroes without a decimal separator is ambiguous. In the context of the GP post, he was suggesting that 100 ms has three significant figures, which is not automatically true. In the strictest sense it is not true, but if by your measurement you intend it to be true, you must choose a method to indicate that. Either a trailing separator, or preferably a different notation, such as 1.00 x 10^2.

No, that would be 100. ms.

100 ms has just one significant digit and therefore is exactly as precise as 0.1 s.

Known in what way? People have been trying to make AAV-vectored vaccines for a while, but nobody has succeeded yet.

They do sell a $35k version, but it is a customization that they bury. It’s fair to say $38k is the base model. I’m not going to go out and buy it because it doesn’t meet my current needs (enough room for a family of 5), but I could afford it if I really wanted it, as can the many millions of people who buy other similarly priced vehicles already. I actually looked at it in the showroom. It has a lot more storage space than it looks on the outside. If you do drive more than 30 miles per day regularly you might want a charger, but drip charging is enough for many who don’t drive that much.

All that said, I’m looking forward to the price coming down. Hopefully that’s going to be a reality in a few years when the battery becomes cheaper.

Yeah, and consider that as a full time employee myself, the rate we bill customers is 3x my salary fully burdened. So companies are quite prepared to pay good rates for quality work, and there is plenty of room to pay your own benefits. The only real downside is an inability to get a good group rate on health insurance.

I never mentioned the model S. The model S has always been marketed as a luxury sedan, not an “affordable” car. The model 3 is the more affordable version, and yes it is more expensive than an average Camry. My point, though, is that there are plenty of people who can afford more than a Camry if they want to. They may be above average, but they aren’t ultra-rich. The majority of pickups sold are vanity vehicles. If you can afford a pickup, you can afford a model 3. I spent $34k on my Subaru. When you start upgrading the trim and adding options, many cars can get into the mid-$30k range easily.

You can’t become a billionaire “simply” building tables, but there are more ways than you might think to start a successful business. See for example,
https://www.inc.com/magazine/2...

If you’re interested in entrepreneurship I recommend listening to How I Built This by Guy Raz on NPR.
https://www.npr.org/podcasts/5...

Some really interesting stories of ordinary people starting businesses that became successful, eventually.

The most popular vehicle sold in the US is the Ford F-series pickup truck which has an average MSRP of ~$35k.

https://www.edmunds.com/most-p...

A Toyota Camry has trims with MSRP exceeding $35k, so that’s not as cheap as you might think either. The M3 is not a base trim model. The point is, a lot of people can afford to buy cars in the mid-$30k price range, if it is something they want.

If you can devise a method to determine this, you will be very rich. It’s far more complicated than you might think. Being able to predict this, or even adequately measure this would greatly advance the therapeutic spaces for many diseases.