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So you are saying "But then to blatantly tack on additional charges for electric vehicles and solar charges"

Your electric bill comes is added charges for EVs???

Well, at least you're not mad about it.....

And lower...

Some people can afford luxurious electric cars and are "early adopters." To each their own.

It is not their fault there are government subsidies that they lawfully take advantage of. They are fools if they don't.

In the long-run (perhaps 20 or so years), I think electric or other non-petroleum cars will be a thing for us all. But, not right now, obviously.

And, I agree that the electric car purchase subsidies are pitifully too much.

#1191?

All motion is relative. Perhaps I’m standing still and you are rising above us.

Don't get your question. Rephrase?

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is investigating Tesla's Autopilot (again) to determine if the over-the-air update to the automated driving system was enough to keep drivers on the road.

The new probe comes after the NHTSA closed a multi-year investigation into Autopilot. The prior report found evidence that "Tesla's weak driver engagement system was not appropriate for Autopilot's permissive operating capabilities," which resulted in a "critical safety gap."

On Friday, NHTSA said the original Autopilot investigation was opened to see if "Tesla's Autopilot contained a defect that created an unreasonable risk to motor vehicle safety," adding that it discovered similar findings with Tesla's voluntary recall (Recall 23V838). talking up at the last earnings call only three months ago.


The initial investigation found at least 13 crashes involving one or more fatalities, many more involving severe injuries, in which "foreseeable driver misuse played an apparent role," NHTSA said.

The new investigation covers two million Model Y, X, S, 3, and Cybertruck vehicles equipped with Autopilot produced between 2012 and 2024.

The federal agency is concerned about whether the company's remedy was enough, partly because 20 crashes have occurred since the over-the-air software update earlier this year.

One ZH reader reached out to us about Autopilot, explaining that the automated driving system has become increasingly aggressive in making sure the operator is paying attention since the update. The individual told us he was suspended from using Autopilot earlier this week for what he says were 'minor' distractions while driving, adding that the warning system is getting more strict by the update.

During a call with investors earlier this week, Elon Musk said, "I actually do not think that there will be significant regulatory barriers, provided there is conclusive data that the autonomous car is safer than a human-driven car," adding that those who doubt Tesla's ability to "solve" autonomy shouldn't invest in the company.

Meanwhile, the Biden administration has weaponized federal agencies against Musk's companies, such as SpaceX and Tesla. This is mainly over Musk's 'free speech' platform, "X," which the Biden administration despised because it has been unable to suppress the First Amendment on the platform through the censorship-industrial complex.

https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/tesla-autopilot-probed-again-after-20-crashes-update-remedy

An energy report released last October by the Texas Public Policy Foundation concluded that EVs would cost tens of thousands of dollars more if not for generous taxpayer-funded incentives: the average model year 2021 EV would cost approximately $48,698 more to own over a 10-year period without the staggering $22 billion in taxpayer-funded handouts that the government provides to electric car manufacturers and owners.

So Brewha as you’ve mentioned many times you’re against corporate welfare so I’m assuming you’ll write a check to the Treasury to reimburse them for your portion of Tesla’s welfare check they received for your car?

Wow - that is really strange.

I cannot even think of a cost a power company would have for EV's. It's like a cloth dryer surcharge.

It is odd you would use my point as it has nothing to do EV's. It was about obvious ways to make money when the game is rigged. You are talking about taxpayer funded incentives. What I said has nothing to do with that.

The government shouldn’t have bailed them out. Nor should the government have bailed out the banks. For far too long corporate America has operated under the assumption that some companies too large to fail and so vital to national security that they are immune to the normal consequences of being fiscally irresponsible. For far too long they have followed the Henry Ford theorem of you-can-have-them-any-color-you-want-as-long-as-its-black.

But, what really bothers me the most is that the current viability of the EV market is subject to the whims of our largest geo-political enemy. Depending on the source Chinese owned companies control anywhere between 50 & 98.2% of the raw materials to manufacture the batteries used to power EV’s. What happens in say 30 years if 80% of new cars sales are EV’e that use batteries manufactured from Chinese controlled materials and China decides to close the supply channel? That would shut down car sales which would ripple all the way up the supply chain then outward to via a reverse ripple effect.

In The Washington state:

This week, Gov. Jay Inslee announced $45 million in subsidies through a Department of Commerce grant program for families deemed “low-income” to purchase an EV.

“Washingtonians really get it when it comes to electric vehicles,” Inslee said at a Wednesday news conference in Tukwila.

Then there’s this:

Making EVs More Affordable at the Dealer: On average, EVs are now 20 percent cheaper than they were one year ago. As of January 1st, Americans can get up to $7,500 off the sticker price of many of the new electric vehicles eligible for the Inflation Reduction Act’s 30D New Clean Vehicle Tax Credit, and up to $4,000 off the price of a used EV for vehicles eligible for the 25E Used Clean Vehicle Credit. Already, over 9,500 dealers across the country have registered with IRS Energy Credits Online, most of which also registered to provide this tax credit at the point of sale.

I knew there was something about Washington I liked!

I have absolutely no problem with the development of cleaner energy. On the other hand, I’m opposed to risking our economic future by investing in technology that relies on raw materials controlled by our biggest and strongest political opponent for a critical component.

Even worse...with all of this "technology" tooling down the US road system...what are they harvesting? The ability to killswitch remotely is already there. Drive with a cellphone that just so happens to be linked to the car...yeah...sorry about your data! Then there's the whole auto-driver function that could be turned on from afar...they're already doing it now, so let's give a trustworthy adversary those tools! No, it's insidious and people really need to wake up because this...is what Rush warned us about. Yeah, the Canadian band Rush.

https://youtu.be/_LXKZq0fYDw?si=lUve3CYm6JzfGkq1


Everything was just fine. Then government crept in and decided they wanted MORE control over where you go, how you get there and whom makes that mode of transportation. What's worse...we're (Western society) enriching the CCP so they can build their military for World domination. They'll use that after they have their Silk Road nations on the hook and harvested what they wanted but now need to move those pesky natives off the land altogether. Spooking children with climate change to alter their behavior with nothing but fear. Watch, they'll get them to eat bugs and insects too...BECAUSE! When you hear fartcar drivers suggesting that after you get your 19th booster that a great grasshopper hot dog does a body good. IT's for grandma and the children so you have to comply. Be the 1st on your block to wear those old school patrol sashes and narc out the neighborhood for Crimes Against Humanity!

No, there's more here than overburdening one of America's weakest infrastructure links with golf carts that use diesel powered behemoths the size of large buildings raping the Earth and leaving tidbits for the "artesian" mining children so they can become infected with lung diseases and God knows what to pollute their DNA down the line breathing in the debris. But hey, we're not buying them to save the planet are we? Aren't we? Sounds like someone isn't on script with the Biden messaging. All while being gaslit by the most gullible buffoons trying to make their poor decisions make sense. Baffling really.

If we follow your clever little plan of not embracing EVs then China - who is already far ahead of us - WILL own the market in years to come. That is the risk to our economy.

The risk you see because of materials is fallacious.

don't you know sarcasm when you read it?

Wow. It’s like magic money!

Regurgitating a lie is not sarcasm. So how many trillions?

https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/sen-whitehouse-on-fossil-fuel-subsidies-we-are-subsidizing-the-danger-#:~:text=It's%20not%20just%20the%20US,to%20the%20fossil%20fuel%20industry.


SEN. WHITEHOUSE ON FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES: “WE ARE SUBSIDIZING THE DANGER”
Washington, D.C.—U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Chairman of the U.S. Senate Budget Committee, delivered the following opening statement at today’s hearing entitled, “Who Pays the Price: The Real Cost of Fossil Fuels.”

Chairman Whitehouse’s remarks, as prepared for delivery:

Ranking Member Grassley, colleagues, welcome to our seventh Committee hearing on the economic and budgetary perils of dependence on fossil fuels. We have heard testimony from non-partisan, knowledgeable industry leaders about the threat climate change poses to entire sectors of our economy: healthcare, insurance, coastal economies, wildfire areas, the carbon bubble leaving fossil fuel assets stranded.

So, what are we, the federal government, doing to protect against these threats? Actually, we are subsidizing the danger.

As we’ll hear today, the United States subsidizes the fossil fuel industry with taxpayer dollars. It’s not just the US: according to the International Energy Agency, fossil fuel handouts hit a global high of $1 trillion in 2022 – the same year Big Oil pulled in a record $4 trillion of income.

In the United States, by some estimates taxpayers pay about $20 billion dollars every year to the fossil fuel industry. What do we get for that? Economists generally agree: not much. To quote conservative economist Gib Metcalf: these subsidies offer “little if any benefit in the form of oil patch jobs, lower prices at the pump, or increased energy security for the country.” The cash subsidy is both big and wrong.

But the really big subsidy is the license to pollute for free. The IMF calls this global free pass an “implicit” fossil fuel subsidy. Economists call it an “unpriced externality.” Behind these benign-sounding phrases is a lot of harm.

Start with harmful effects of local air pollution. Researchers from Harvard found pollutants from oil and gas combustion were responsible for 8.7 million premature deaths annually – the increased mortality rates from heat and air pollution we heard about at last week’s hearing.

Then, growing costs from intensifying disasters: wildfires, floods, droughts, which according to OMB could cost the federal budget $2 trillion annually and reduce US GDP 3 to 10 percent by the end of the century.

You tally up the harms, and the IMF estimates it at a $5.4 trillion annual subsidy worldwide. In the United States, it’s $646 billion – every single year.

Worse, this is almost certainly undercounting the true costs. The London School of Economics reports that studies often underestimate the harm of climate dangers by failing to account for how hazards can cascade across ecological and economic systems. These cascades can cause irreparable damage to human well-being, to ecosystems, and to the US economy. These are the systemic risks we’ve heard about from previous witnesses.

And as we will hear from one of our witnesses today, the very act of extracting these dirty fuels has terrible consequences for human health – especially for children. From higher rates of birth defects to childhood leukemia, there’s ample evidence that communities around oil and gas extraction sites pay an especially high price.

It's textbook economics that the price of a good should reflect its true cost. The fossil fuel industry violates this rule of market economies. It does so by spending billions of dollars on disinformation, false doubts, climate obstruction, and political dark money. And why not, to protect one of the most lucrative subsidies in human history? This, ladies and gentlemen, is why we can’t have nice things like clean air, safe coral reefs, secure coast lines, and affordable clean energy.

Over in the House, MAGA extremists are doubling down on polluter handouts to their big donors, with their Default on America Act that puts the American taxpayer on the hook for climate disaster.

It is not about debts or deficits. It’s dirty work for an industry that controls one of the main political parties in this country. Oil and gas extraction represents only about 5 percent of GDP. Farming, manufacturing, food and beverage, insurance, finance, restaurants, retail, housing, healthcare – all represent a larger share of GDP. Clean energy now accounts for more employment than the fossil fuel industry. But for political influence, to protect those massive subsidies, nothing compares to fossil fuel.

It is a fundamental principle of democracy that everyone should get an equal say. But here the rich and the powerful hoard all the benefits for themselves and leave everyone else – often the most vulnerable Americans – to pay the price.

You cite a speech by a politician as the basis for your fact?


What does “by some estimates” mean? What is the actual number? The subsidy for an electric car to the consumer is $7500.

How does $20 billion become “trillions”?

Oh stop...I was rather enjoying his little JG Wentworth whinefest.

I’m just afraid I’m going to be asked to pay back his student loans.

The only thing I can agree with here is that we don’t need to subsidize fossil fuels with taxes. Below that they get into half truths and disputed information - I suppose taking the opportunity to make a political stance. “Both sides” do this and it is equally frustrating to me. One idea bounced around is having all electric vehicles by 2030 or 35 or 45 or something in that range depending on which state or group is talking. That would put us net positive on carbon and pollution by the year 2100. The left doesn’t discuss that…neither does the right and that is doubly frustrating. And, to repeat an earlier complaint I had, this leaves citizens at each other’s throats. Government and global companies continue their BS and we end up fighting and fussing with each other.