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diesel trucks getting a free pass. that bugs me.
diesel particulate is a nasty toxin, yes?

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Originally Posted by creaturecat (Post 9115954)

diesel trucks getting a free pass. that bugs me.
diesel particulate is a nasty toxin, yes?

How so? The diesel trucks we run are bogged down with all sorts of emissions equipment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by techweenie (Post 9114959)

Pretty ignorant article. Every car company gets similar offers. When Nissan moved to TN & MS, the tax breaks were in the millions.

Exactly. Talk about mis-placed blame!

The fact of the matter is, Musk has a responsibility to maximize shareholder value. This means shopping around for the best location to build factories, and building products that can be profitably sold. Take it up with lawmakers (on both sides of the aisle) if you have a problem with incentivizing job creating factories or environmentally friendly(er) vehicles.

Quote:

Originally Posted by creaturecat (Post 9115954)

diesel trucks getting a free pass. that bugs me.
diesel particulate is a nasty toxin, yes?

No. They have particulate filters, at least in this country.

Quote:

Originally Posted by techweenie (Post 9114959)

And it's not just car companies. Governments of all sizes offer tax breaks, free services, even free land to get a company to locate or relocate there. My little town just waived a new company's property tax for ten years to get it to relocate here. A company called NCR (used to be National Cash Register) got an offer of tax-free living from Atlanta. They pulled up stakes and left Dayton, where the company had been for 100 years. The state of Ohio paved Proctor and Gamble's parking lot to the tune of $250k just to keep them from moving out of the state. It happens all the time. I don't like it, but it's myopic to single out one company or industry when everyone is doing it.

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Originally Posted by wdfifteen (Post 9116047)

And lets not forget our tax dollars bailing out failed banks and automobile manufactures that admitted they were going out of business because they were producing sub par vehicles... and then there are the subsidies to the tobacco industry.

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Originally Posted by red-beard (Post 9115236)

I'm in the solar business. I don't think so.

Agreed. I'd be surprised to see 14 cents per kwh out of PV, part time, under ideal conditions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by techweenie (Post 9114959)

Pretty ignorant article. Every car company gets similar offers. When Nissan moved to TN & MS, the tax breaks were in the millions. If NV wants to throw $1.3 B at Tesla for a battery co, it costs me nothing. Because I don't pay taxes in NV.

From the late 2000s, every car model meeting certain emission goals earned a federal tax credit up to a certain volume. I think it was $7500 each for the first 200K qualifying vehicles from each manufacturer. The idea was to prime the pump & get plug-in cars on the road. So with 500K Tesla Model 3s spoken for, maybe 200K will not earn a Federal tax credit. And Priuses would also be on the way to sucking up all Toyota's buyers' credits

You live in Los Angeles, do you buy gasoline or diesel fuel?
If you do then you are helping pay for tesla cars.
That $300 mil that tesla gets from So Cal refineries in exchange for phony BS "carbon credits?"
It gets passed directly to the consumer. On top of that, last January the price went up another 10 cents per gallon to pay for the scam carbon credits program.

LOL, it is coming out of your pockets, but keep denying.
nothing worse that getting conned and not even realizing it.
Musk may be an even better con man than I thought.

As an aside, I was visiting my parents on the coast, and dad has this small restroom in the garage of the beach house. He has a bunch of old books in there for reading. I came across a fantastic book about the early automobiles. People were truly hardy folks tooling around in those things, especially in the cold. There was one memorable picture of a tough looking dude who used his car to go hunting, and to bring his animal carcasses back.

People today don't care for adventure or risk. They want to buy the world a Coke, and pretend that they can wish away all the bad parts of life. That is the fairytale thinking around Musk. He's going to give you magic, and you can zip around in your bubble electric car. Oh, and tell me the one again about how you're saving money (clap clap).

Oh and BTW, the amount of carbon credits that the gubmint gives tesla goes up every year by about 10%.
Next year 110%, the next year 120% and so on.

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Tesla's secret to success? Selling emissions credits

By David Weinberg
May 08, 2013 | 4:39 AM

Today the electric car company Tesla Motors is expected to announce it has turned a profit for the first time. That’s in part because of the success of its Model S luxury sedan, which costs anywhere from $70,000 to $100,000. But what has also led to those profits is money that Tesla made from selling California Zero Emission Vehicle Credits to other car companies.

To understand the complicated world of California’s credit system I thought I would start by visiting a Tesla store in Santa Monica, just a few blocks from the Pacific.

In the spare, white-tiled showroom at the Third Street Promenade, an upscale outdoor mall, I met Tesla's manager for the Southwest region Jeremy Snyder.

“The Tesla store experience is unique because we own all of our distribution and unlike dealer franchises, we control the entire experience,” Snyder said.

This is the first point in a very long list of ways that Tesla different is from every other car company Snyder explained. Another: Tesla keeps only a single car in its showroom -- the Model S.

Snyder led me to an alley behind the store where he keeps the test drive models.

“Why don’t I drive first. It will be easier to blow your mind,” Snyder said. He then touched a chrome panel below the driver side window and the door handle emerged from the side of the car.

We drove up the Pacific Coast Highway and it was kind of a mind blowing experience. The car accelerates with G-force speed. According to Snyder, Blue Angel fighter pilots have described it as the closest thing to an F-18 fighter jet on four wheels. He pressed down on the accelerator and we descended the on ramp toward the beach.

“That’s what we call the Tesla grin,” he said.

But perhaps its greatest engineering feat is its range of 300 miles on a single electric charge. And now the Model S can turn a profit thanks in part to California’s Zero Emission Vehicle Credits.

“The Zero Emission Vehicle regulation is a requirement that’s placed on the large auto makers to make and sell zero emission vehicles,” said Ana Lisa Bevan, with the California Air Resources Board. The board requires auto makers to turn in a certain number of credits per year.

Companies earn those credits by making and selling zero emission vehicles.

“So if a manufacturer has sales in California of, let’s say, 100,000 vehicles, and the obligation is credits equal to one percent of their sales, they have to come up with 1,000 credits,” Bevan said.

If a company comes up short, it has to pay a penalty of up to $5,000 per credit. Or it can buy credits from a company like Tesla, which happens to earn a lot of credits on every car it makes.Tesla has sold enough credits to post its first profit.

http://www.marketplace.org/2013/05/08/sustainability/teslas-secret-success-selling-emissions-credits

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Why Are Taxpayers Subsidizing Elon Musk's $100,000 Tesla?
FEB 17, 2015 8:00 AM EST
By
Bloomberg Editorial Board

Elon Musk, all-purpose impresario of the future, is enthusiastic about electric cars. “Eventually,” he says in the forthcoming issue of Bloomberg Markets magazine, “all cars will go electric.”

As the founder and head honcho of Tesla Motors, he would say that. But he has some evidence on his side. Electric cars are culturally modish. They're by most accounts fun and safe to drive. And their sales have been holding up lately, even as the price of oil has sunk and Tesla's stock has had a bumpy ride.

One problem: The success of electric cars generally -- and of Tesla in particular -- is due in no small part to a government mandate. And that mandate is distorting the auto market without clear evidence that it's going to achieve its stated purpose.

Tesla benefits from something called zero-emission credits. Pioneered in California and nine other states, the policy will impose fines on large automakers this year unless zero-emission vehicles account for at least 4 percent of their sales, rising to 15.4 percent for 2018 models. Companies that exceed the mandate get credits they can sell to their noncompliant competitors. For Tesla, each new sale brings multiple credits, adding up to a windfall for each Model S sold.

This policy is clever, well-intentioned and wrongheaded.

For one thing, it works at cross purposes with federal fuel-economy standards. Those standards require a manufacturer's entire fleet to exceed an average miles-per-gallon threshold. But when an automaker sells an electric vehicle, the government credits it against this overall average twice. Because of this double credit, the permissible fuel efficiency of the fleet is allowed to drop by a greater amount than what the fleet gains from an additional electric vehicle. So when California mandates that an automaker sell a zero-emission car, it effectively reduces the entire country's fuel efficiency.

And that mandate may not even make sense on its own terms. Whether electric cars contribute less to climate change than efficient gas-powered ones isn't as obvious as you might think. It depends on variables such as what time of day they're charged and the makeup of the local power grid. If much of the electricity used to charge them originates as coal, then their benefits quickly dissipate.

While electric cars should be a piece of the clean-energy puzzle, they shouldn't be favored at the expense of other technologies. Because electrics are, at present, essentially the only practical way to get to zero emissions, California is prodding automakers to bet on an extremely expensive and possibly inefficient method of reducing greenhouse gases. And it's penalizing the buyers of nonelectric vehicles -- who ultimately bear the costs when automakers have to buy credits from Tesla -- to subsidize someone else's purchase of a $100,000 car.

A better way to reduce emissions is to continue tightening federal fuel-efficiency standards and to reduce their perverse bias in favor of larger vehicles. Better still would be a carbon tax, which would give customers an incentive to buy more efficient cars and harness the market to encourage innovation. That's more politically feasible than you may think, and the consensus choice among economists for fighting climate change.

As appealing as a new Tesla is -- and with apologies to Elon Musk -- it's not going to save the world by itself. Governments should stop pretending it will.

Why Are Taxpayers Subsidizing Elon Musk's $100,000 Tesla? - Bloomberg View

Analysis: Tesla may have made over $100 million off the CARB enabled battery swap ZEV credit scheme
Anthony Watts / March 12, 2014
Guest essay by Alberto Zaragoza Comendador

In the past I’ve provided estimates of the money Tesla has made off this mysterious feature enabled by credits authorized by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). These estimates were very simplistic: basically I multiplied their ZEV revenue by 0.35 or a similar number.

Now, I have something more precise with references to back it up.

Key data points:

The 85 kWh version of the Tesla Model S, called simply “S85” from here on, was reclassified from a Type III zero-emissions vehicle to a Type V on October 12th 2012. The previous official document, dated June 15, showed it was a Type III vehicle. This reclassification increased the number of ZEV credits Tesla got per car from 4 to 7. Of course, there is the possibility that the car had already been earning these extra credits days or weeks before October 12, but there is no way to know. (I will call the original 4 “standard credits”, while the additional 1-3 will be “extra credits”).
The 60kWh model, or “S60”, was reclassified on December 20. No sales took place in 2012, so for this version all units produced benefited from the battery swap.
Therefore, Tesla started gaining ZEV credits thanks to the battery swap in 2012Q4.
Tesla’s car deliveries and much more info can be seen here. I got the numbers from their letters to shareholders: 2012Q4, 2013Q1, 2013Q2, 2013Q3 and 2013Q4.
ZEV credit revenue is available in the same Excel as their car sales. There are some small doubts about their 2012 revenue. This is a more in-depth look at their financials.
Tesla’s sales in California can be seen in the same document. The data comes from Green Car Reports, which in turn got it from the California New Car Dealers Association (CNCDA). I’ve been unable to obtain their numbers for 2012.
As for its sales mix, Tesla has been vague. Although it’s well-known that the S85 sells more than the S60, I cannot find a definitive statement from them about the issue.
There are 12 states with a ZEV mandate, but California dwarfs them all (1.7 million car sales last year). The difference is even more lopsided if we talk exclusively about Tesla sales, as in the period studied the state made up about half of all deliveries in the US. And California’s ZEV program is far more advanced than the others, having begun in 2006.
From 2012Q4 to 2013Q3, Tesla sold 1,311.52 NMOG credits. For some reason CARB reports transfers in these terms, however, at the bottom of the page you can see that the denominator to convert these credits to ZEV is 0.035. Therefore 1,311.52 / 0.035 = 37,742.
In the same link too, you can see that at the end of 2013Q3 Tesla still had 276.080 NMOG credits, or 7,888 ZEV credits.
Only 250 Model S were sold in 2012Q3, and basically zero before that. Previously they had obtained credits through the Roadster, but only about 2,000 were sold worldwide and Tesla had already generated revenue from those in 2008-2011.
Key assumptions:

For simplicity purposes, I assume all S85s sold in California since and including Q4 benefited from the ZEV reclassification. That is, they moved from 4 to 7 ZEV credits. I’m including 12 days’ worth of sales in 2012Q4, but they were still ramping up production then so it must be less than 10% of the quarter’s sales. In any case it does not affect the overall math.
In 2012Q4, 1,500 Model S were sold in the state.
90% of Tesla ZEV revenue comes from California.
In 2012Q4, ZEV revenue was $35 million. We know that for all of 2012 it was $40.5 million and it was concentrated in Q4 (they didn’t even mention it in the other quarters). We also know that the $40.5 million figure includes undisclosed but small revenue from GHG credits.
Tesla had 0 ZEV credits as of October 1st, 2012. Very small room for mistake here, as they could have a tiny quantity left over from the Roadster or the few Model S deliveries earlier in 2012.
If you think some assumptions are unrealistic or whatever, fine. The Excel document is free for anybody to download and tinker with.

So how much is the battery swap worth?

There are two questions here: how many of those extra credits they have sold, and how many they have earned but not sold.

One can envision any number of scenarios, but as you’ll see, no matter how you square the numbers Tesla stands to make a lot of money off the battery swap.

· Assuming a 60% S85 mix, Tesla earned 51,029 ZEV credits from 2012Q4 to 2013Q3. Of these, 32,148 were standard and 18,881 were extra. Since Tesla transferred 37,742 credits to other manufacturers in the same period, the conclusion is that they sold their entire standard allotment, and then an extra 5,594 credits. So the extra ones made up 14.8% of their sales. With ZEV revenue in California at $148.3 million for the period, this would mean the company got $22 million it wouldn’t have gotten without the battery swap.

· Under the same 60% mix, Tesla would still have 13,287 credits in its balance at the end of 2013Q3, all of them extra. (CARB’s website says they had 7,888, which suggests they transferred credits to other states). When adding those they earned in 2013Q4, the number rises to 24,404, of which 17,772 were extra.

· So in this period they sold 37,742 credits for $148.3 million, which gives a per-credit price of $3,929. If Tesla just manages to get the same price it has gotten so far, their remaining extra credits will be worth $69.8 million.

Yeah. More than $90 million in total. And that’s only the ones they got before January 1st, 2014. With about 1,800 Model S sales in California, the value of their remaining credits grows by about $15 million – every quarter.

It happens that the fine for not meeting ZEV requirements is $5,000 per credit (see slide 93), so that’s about the maximum other carmakers are willing to pay for these things. Our $3,929 figure is therefore in the right ballpark, and it shows Tesla’s revenue from California ZEV credits couldn’t have been much lower than the figure I offered ($148.3 million).

In the Excel I’ve uploaded, I assumed a 60% mix. But you can just change the numbers to see what happens. Keep in mind that sales mix does not affect the number of standard credits they earn, because both the S60 and the S85 get 4 of those: it only affects the number of extra credits.

Even so, I offered an absurdly high estimate of Tesla’s California sales for 2012Q4 (2,400, which were in fact their global sales), so as to increase their standard credits. Assuming 80% of Model S sales were S85s, the results would be:

· 35,748 standard credits earned in 2012Q4-2013Q3, plus 24,196 extra ones

· So if they sold 37,742 credits, that means they sold their entire standard batch and 1,994 extra ones. In turn, that means 5.3% of their ZEV revenue was thanks to the battery swap.

· That’s “only” $7.9 million. But if they sold so few extra credits…

· …the result is they had 22,204 in balance at the end of 2013Q3. Remember CARB’s website says they had 7,888, so either they transferred massive amounts to other states or there’s something else I’m missing.

· Add in their numbers for 2013Q4 and they have 34,038 in the bank, of which 26,866 were extra.

· And which, at a selling price of $3,929, would be worth $105.6 million.

Yikes.

“But they won’t be able to sell so many credits! The market will get saturated!”

Really?

Here’s a reminder of how the ZEV mandate works. It requires every major manufacturer to sell a given percentage of zero-emission vehicles, and by 2025 it will reach 15% Even if the state as a whole passes that threshold (EV sales were 1% of the market last year), many manufacturers no doubt will fall below and will need to buy credits. And if history is any guide, the program will not be withdrawn in 2025. EV advocates will say the technology still hasn’t reached critical mass, whatever that means.

It’s true the market is oversupplied right now. But starting in January 2018, all credits will be allotted according to range alone, not refueling time – this will effectively close the battery swap loophole. More importantly, the number of credits per car will be drastically reduced, as 3 will be the maximum – no matter if your electric car goes 300 or 500 miles. See slide 66 of the previous document.

Get this: right now, Tesla gets about 6.5 ZEV credits every time it sells a car. The market cannot buy all those credits so they keep thousands in the bank and transfer thousands more to states other than California.

Then comes 2018, the ZEV requirements have gotten much stricter, and every car gets 3 credits at most. Meaning there will be no manufacturer with an excess of credits it can sell. And there will probably be many with a deficit. And Tesla will have a huge balance of credits from the good old battery swap days.

Tesla is playing the long game.

Oh, and the company may have the opportunity to stockpile even more credits before the supply gets tight, because Type V ZEVs will get 9 credits instead of 7 in the 2015-2017 period. It’s unclear whether regulators will allow this, as CARB has stated it intends to exclude battery swap from the fast-refueling category at the end of this year; that would bring Tesla back to 4 credits per car. Other carmakers are going to sell hydrogen vehicles in that period which also qualify for the 9 credits because of their range and refueling time, and they’re probably protesting the privileged treatment Tesla gets.

But if the loophole isn’t closed, the company will be getting an average of about 8 credits per vehicle: twice what they would get without the swap.

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Tesla’s First-Ever Profit Came Thanks To Selling Zero Emission Credits To Competitors, But It Insists It’s Not Dependent On Bartering CO2 Offsets
BY ANGELO YOUNG ON 05/21/13 AT 9:51 AM

Tesla Motors Inc. (Nasdaq:TSLA), the Palo Alto-based maker of the sexy Model S electric sedan and the 2014 Model X SUV, made a considerable amount of its revenue this year not by selling electric cars, but by selling carbon credits to other automakers.

Here’s what the company said of its performance in the first three months of 2012:

Zero emission vehicle (ZEV) credits sold to other automakers amounted to approximately $68 million, or 12% of revenues.

Zero emission vehicle credits are sold to automakers concerned about new environmental regulations in several states, led by California, that mandate that at least 15 percent of sales come from zero-emission vehicles by as early as 2025. Companies can skirt the rules by buying credits from companies that are more than abiding by the rules. Tesla is a natural source since it only makes electric vehicles.

The company reported its first profit this year, of $11.2 million, so without the revenue from the credits, the company would have lost money.

"I think they're embarrassed how much money they're making on this," Adam Jonas, an auto analyst with Morgan Stanley, told CNN Money in a report posted on Tuesday. He estimated the company would make $188 million selling these credits to automakers, which have included Honda North America, Inc.

Tesla appears touchy on the subject. In its quarterly report, it insists it will meet the target 25 percent margin, “assuming zero ZEV credit revenue.”

“This may turn out to be greater than zero, but we are not counting on it,” the company said, citing declining prices for the credits and improved worldwide deliveries of their vehicles this year.

The company delivered 4,900 units in the first quarter ended March 31; it claims to currently have orders for over 20,000 units per year worldwide.

Teslaâ€™s First-Ever Profit Came Thanks To Selling Zero Emission Credits To Competitors, But It Insists Itâ€™s Not Dependent On Bartering CO2 Offsets

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Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies
Elon Musk's companies fueled by government subsidies
(Jerome Adamstein / Los Angeles Times)

Los Angeles entrepreneur Elon Musk has built a multibillion-dollar fortune running companies that make electric cars, sell solar panels and launch rockets into space.

And he's built those companies with the help of billions in government subsidies.

Tesla Motors Inc., SolarCity Corp. and Space Exploration Technologies Corp., known as SpaceX, together have benefited from an estimated $4.9 billion in government support, according to data compiled by The Times. The figure underscores a common theme running through his emerging empire: a public-private financing model underpinning long-shot start-ups.

"He definitely goes where there is government money," said Dan Dolev, an analyst at Jefferies Equity Research. "That's a great strategy, but the government will cut you off one day."

The figure compiled by The Times comprises a variety of government incentives, including grants, tax breaks, factory construction, discounted loans and environmental credits that Tesla can sell. It also includes tax credits and rebates to buyers of solar panels and electric cars.

One reason Tesla cares so much about California's air
The electric automaker Tesla has a side business. It's called environmental credits.
A looming question is whether the companies are moving toward self-sufficiency — as Dolev believes — and whether they can slash development costs before the public largesse ends.

Tesla and SolarCity continue to report net losses after a decade in business, but the stocks of both companies have soared on their potential; Musk's stake in the firms alone is worth about $10 billion. (SpaceX, a private company, does not publicly report financial performance.)

Musk and his companies' investors enjoy most of the financial upside of the government support, while taxpayers shoulder the cost.

See the most-read stories this hour >>
The payoff for the public would come in the form of major pollution reductions, but only if solar panels and electric cars break through as viable mass-market products. For now, both remain niche products for mostly well-heeled customers.

Musk declined repeated requests for an interview through Tesla spokespeople, and officials at all three companies declined to comment.

The subsidies have generally been disclosed in public records and company filings. But the full scope of the public assistance hasn't been tallied because it has been granted over time from different levels of government.

New York state is spending $750 million to build a solar panel factory in Buffalo for SolarCity. The San Mateo, Calif.-based company will lease the plant for $1 a year. It will not pay property taxes for a decade, which would otherwise total an estimated $260 million.

The federal government also provides grants or tax credits to cover 30% of the cost of solar installations. SolarCity reported receiving $497.5 million in direct grants from the Treasury Department.

That figure, however, doesn't capture the full value of the government's support.

Since 2006, SolarCity has installed systems for 217,595 customers, according to a corporate filing. If each paid the current average price for a residential system — about $23,000, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists — the cost to the government would total about $1.5 billion, which would include the Treasury grants paid to SolarCity.

Nevada has agreed to provide Tesla with $1.3 billion in incentives to help build a massive battery factory near Reno.

The Palo Alto company has also collected more than $517 million from competing automakers by selling environmental credits. In a regulatory system pioneered by California and adopted by nine other states, automakers must buy the credits if they fail to sell enough zero-emissions cars to meet mandates. The tally also includes some federal environmental credits.

On a smaller scale, SpaceX, Musk's rocket company, cut a deal for about $20 million in economic development subsidies from Texas to construct a launch facility there. (Separate from incentives, SpaceX has won more than $5.5 billion in government contracts from NASA and the U.S. Air Force.)

Subsidies are handed out in all kinds of industries, with U.S. corporations collecting tens of billions of dollars each year, according to Good Jobs First, a nonprofit that tracks government subsidies. And the incentives for solar panels and electric cars are available to all companies that sell them.

Musk and his investors have also put large sums of private capital into the companies.

But public subsidies for Musk's companies stand out both for the amount, relative to the size of the companies, and for their dependence on them.

"Government support is a theme of all three of these companies, and without it none of them would be around," said Mark Spiegel, a hedge fund manager for Stanphyl Capital Partners who is shorting Tesla's stock, a bet that pays off if Tesla shares fall.

Tesla stock has risen 157%, to $250.80 as of Friday's close, over the last two years.

Musk has proved so adept at landing incentives that states now compete to give him money, said Ashlee Vance, author of "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future," a recently published biography.

"As his star has risen, every state wants a piece of Elon Musk," Vance said.

Before his current ventures, he made a substantial sum from EBay Inc.'s $1.5-billion purchase of PayPal, the electronic payment system in which Musk held an 11% stake.

Soon after, he founded SpaceX in 2002 with money from that sale, and he made major investments and took leadership posts at Tesla and Solar City.

Musk is now the chief executive of both Tesla and SpaceX and the chairman of SolarCity, and holds big stakes in all three, including 27% of Tesla and 23% of SolarCity, according to recent regulatory filings. The ventures employ about 23,000 people nationwide, and they operate or are building factories and facilities in California, Michigan, New York, Nevada and Texas.

Tense talks

The $1.3 billion in benefits for Tesla's Nevada battery factory resulted from a year of hardball negotiations.

Late in 2013, Tesla summoned economic development officials from seven states to its auto factory in Fremont, Calif. After a tour, they gathered in a conference room, where Tesla executives explained their plan to build the biggest lithium-ion battery factory in the world — then asked the states to bid for the project.

Nevada at first offered its standard package of incentives, in this case worth $600 million to $700 million, said Steve Hill, Nevada's executive director of the Governor's Office of Economic Development.

Tesla negotiators wanted far more. The automaker at first sought a $500-million upfront payment, among other enticements, Hill said. Nevada pushed back, in sometimes tense talks punctuated by raised voices.

"It would have amounted to Nevada writing a series of checks during the first couple of years," said Hill, calling it an unacceptable risk.

With the deal imperiled, Hill flew to Palo Alto in August to meet with Tesla's business development chief, Diarmuid O'Connell, a former State Department official who is the automaker's lead negotiator.

They shored up the deal with an agreement to give Tesla $195 million in transferable tax credits, which the automaker could sell for upfront cash. To make room in its budget, Nevada reduced incentives for filming in the state and killed a tax break for insurance companies.

Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval and Musk sealed the agreement in a Labor Day phone conversation. Hill said it was worth it, pointing to the 6,000 jobs he expects the factory to eventually create.

The state commissioned an analysis estimating the economic impact from the project at $100 billion over two decades, but some economists called that figure deeply flawed. It counted every Tesla employee as if they would otherwise have been unemployed, for instance, and it made no allowance for increased government spending to serve the influx of thousands of local residents.

A $750-million factory

Musk has similar success with getting subsidies for a SolarCity plant in Buffalo, N.Y. The company currently buys many of its solar panels from China, but it will soon become its own supplier with a new and heavily subsidized factory.

An affiliate of New York's College of Nanoscale Science and Engineering in Albany will spend $750 million to build a solar panel factory on state land. SolarCity estimated in a corporate filing that it will spend an additional $150 million to get the factory operating.
cont.

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Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies - LA Times

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Originally Posted by sammyg2 (Post 9116180)

Agreed. I'd be surprised to see 14 cents per kwh out of PV, part time, under ideal conditions.

We can get it to $0.07-0.08, in Houston, 20 year value. But we pay that for power now.

Tesla's 10-Q Reveals ZEV Credits Had A Major Impact In The Quarter
Chuck Jones , CONTRIBUTOR

A lot can be learned from reading through a company’s 10-Q and 10-K filings and Tesla is no exception. You can tease out revenue, expense and geographic details when going through the various sections.

ZEV credits came back into play for a quarter

While Tesla’s overall plans do not rely on ZEV (Zero Emission Vehicle) credits to be a contributor to gross margin they did contribute $76.1 million to revenue and gross margin in the September quarter due to one-time contracts with various OEMs. This was substantially above the $10 million in the June quarter and $0 the previous two quarters and Tesla expects them to be lower in the future but did not give any specific numbers in the 10-Q. Since the ZEV credits were 8.2% of the company’s total revenue they had a major impact to the quarter’s results.

When you remove the $76.1 million from Tesla’s total revenue of $932 million and non-GAAP gross margin dollars of $274 million the resulting gross margin percentage is 23.1% vs. the reported non-GAAP gross margin of 29.4%.

When you take the next step and remove the Powertrain components & related sales from Tesla’s total revenue and adjust again for the ZEV credits the resulting gross margin falls further to 21.9%. This is much lower than the June quarter’s 27.1% so it appears that the manufacturing changes had a large negative impact on the September quarter’s margins. It may not be a coincidence that there were almost no ZEV credits for the three prior quarters and such a large amount in the September quarter.

Source: Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images

China accounted for almost one-quarter of revenue

Tesla changed the way it reports its geographical revenue making it a bit tougher to determine which geographies were responsible for how much revenue. The company only provided revenue for the nine months for the US, Norway and China which while they account for 74% of total revenue they did not give North American (Canada is typically 3% of revenue so not a big deal to calculate) or Europe’s result.

^ Thats why accountants are worth the gold.

Doesn't matter what physics or science say's is best for humanity. You can make all the arguments + / - on any fuel source.

News flash........... perpetual motion machine research and studied by the US Govt. LOL

The detractors here seem to have an issue with the subsidizing of alternative energy, rather than Musk himself, if I am understanding correctly. Musk is simply taking advantage of the loopholes currently in place. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I believe he will be viewed as one of the great innovators of this century. Like Apple has done with various categories, he is dominating and innovating in his categories on a level never before seen. I view him as pure genius.

Quote:

Originally Posted by motion (Post 9117038)

In general, yes. But his team also lobbies for changes in the law that benefit his company. The articles Sammy linked show this.

There may also be some jealousy, on my part...SmileWavy

Quote:

Originally Posted by red-beard (Post 9117100)

In general, yes. But his team also lobbies for changes in the law that benefit his company. The articles Sammy linked show this.

Well, of course they do. He's not an idiot.