Tesla Founders Blog

Hey, every penny counts! Take Carolyn on a nice trip somewhere with that rebate!

The terminology strikes me as odd. I thought that a “rebate” was a “refund” from the entity that has received your payment, but I’m sure that you haven’t paid anything to CARB. I suppose that CARB could volunteer to pay rebates for Tesla (or Zenn, Zap, AC Propulsion, etc.), rather than the companies themselves, but… is this an instance of “your tax dollars at work”? Can’t imagine that CARB gets its money from anywhere else. I wonder what size of budget they have for this sort of thing…?

At any rate… what other windfalls will you reap from your car? The illustrious feds managed to insert all kinds of special interest clauses into their “bailout,” and apparently you can get $7,500 from them for your Roadster, right? What about CA? What kind of tax rebate, if any, does the state offer? Any kinds of discounts on registration? tolls? HOV lanes? I would be curious to know what all those incentives add up to at this point.

# Yanquetino wrote:
## …what other windfalls will you reap from your car? The illustrious feds managed to insert all kinds of special interest clauses into their “bailout,” and apparently you can get $7,500 from them for your Roadster, right?

I think the links I posted just before your comment already mentioned that.

## Any kinds of discounts on registration? tolls? HOV lanes?

There is some mention of that here:
“…High Occupancy Vehicle (HOV) Lane Exemption…” (but will you clutter the Roadster with the required stickers?)
“…Alternative Fuel Vehicle (AFV) License…
…the incremental cost of purchasing an AFV is exempt from the vehicle license fee (of 2%) when the costs are more than the most comparable conventional fuel vehicle…
…This program expires January 1, 2009…”

CNET news has story on singer Neil Young’s classic electric hybrid Lincoln- called the “Thinkin’ Lincoln” (a ‘59)- 500 hp. electric motor- goes 80 to 100 miles per charge-then a rotary CNG engine/generator takes over to power elect. motor. Neil sez that maybe his Neilmobile can win that elect. car prize-shirley he cannot be serious !

Chris- your theme video is correct. The modern world has a totally tremendous capacity to build, make, plan anything and everything-even more so with the tech./computer revolution. The only probelm iz: lack of little green pieces of paper with portraits on them. The economists need to find a way to print and widely distribute vast quantities these paper things without inflation ensuing -that’s the name of that tune. They’re not based on gold or anything-they’re just magic pieces of paper-get enough of it circulating broadly and the whole world is much better and gainfully employed. I see a red door and I want to paint it green. Where’s the genius economists with a new economic answer for a world now swimming in vast capacity to produce things/make things better ? I hope Obama puts together a real good team as advertised- now Gore will have a plush seat at the table. They’re saying on the news that good people from the private sector are already submitting applications to join the Obama fed. govt.-like in the days of JFK. As for Obama being the first black president-wait a minute- his mother was as white as Michael Jackson (iz now, that iz)! News reports of the world celebrations of his win include a story of Obama’s great, great , great grandfather being from Ireland. Maybe that explains his political/populist bent & charisma thing: per Clinton, Reagan, JFK irish backgrounds (and Biden for that matter). Well, none of those guys drove the country into a ditch (and the latter 2 definitely had ” the vision thing” -which Bush Sr. said he never had- no kidding !)-so if form holds true…

TJ,

what impact do you think an Obama-Biden administration will have on the progress of the renewable energy/alternative transportation movements? Will things accelerate? Will it be included in the infrastructure build-out that’s been promised? Will America’s next big industry (& job base) be renewable energy? Who will fill the void as the Detroit 3 fade into history? Will Bush set fire to the Oval Office as he leaves for the last time next January, or will he just be glad he’s leaving? How does all this tie-in to possible rebates on BEVs & REEVs?

How much more can GWB add to the national debt before January 20th 2009? I don’t know about you, but I think we are heading into even more interesting times in the coming months. I hear that the Shrub is trying to trash a lot of environmental legislation before he leaves office. What have you heard?

TJ:

The government printing more dollars without causing inflation is analogous to a company with a million shares outstanding issuing another million shares and expecting their stock price not to drop.

One of the biggest problems in this country is that the dollar is not backed by anything real.

Trying to change the laws of economics is like trying to change the law of gravity. Increasing productivity is the only real way to boost the economy, not by injecting more nearly-worthless dollars into it.

A USD 5000 rebate seems a bit puny to me, especially considering the amount of incentives put on standard gasoline cars every day and the (let’s face it) still minuscule amount of electric cars (ok, I see there are also gas cars: I suppose it’s a very good deal for those guys).

But I admit this HOV-lane thing sounds very good to me. Very good and very cheap but more valuable than a few bucks.

Gabe,

sorry I didn’t respond to your post of Nov. 2nd, I got distracted & busy! I think you’re right about TM’s capital raising strategy, they probably didn’t anticipate having to raise money in such a difficult environment. I’m just a bit surprised that they let it get that low. That kind of news can sink a company. It leaves me wondering what Ze’ev has been up to for the past 10 months or so.
I’m glad that they managed to arrange some additional investment (though I suspect that most of it was from EM…) to get them through to the DOE loan guarantee. Despite what I think of Elon, I still want to see the company succeed (very much so). I hope that there is more development money made available to them from the new administration next year. I agree with many others who feel that TM would put R&D money to much better use than say, GM or Ford.

The times, they are a-changin. Somethins blowin in tha wind.

Question: Why would the feds give GM $10 billion just so they can afford to close factories & lay-off workers? Looks like a Catch 22 for the Federal Government.

I guess the bug in the “productivity= economic progress” system is GDP growth in places like China. While middle class income has been flat for like 10 years, despite some nice productivity gains, the rich have definitely gotten richer. This makes sense, since “the rich” can outsource-then there’s also the “Wal-Mart M.O.” : as the chinese factories get more productive and make more profit ,the Waltons of Arkansas say: “that’s nice to hear-now lower your prices further (as in: give us your new-found profits) so was can sell cheaper-if you still want to sell your products in our esteemed stores, that is”. So Wal-Mart can out-price like Target and K-Mart and whoever, thereby, through shear volume, raking in more cash. Explaining like how something like 5 Waltons are in the top 20 wealthiest people in the U.S. So the newly mutated “asian economic bug” in the system is messing with the “productivity= econ. progress” equation ? Of course the chinese refuse to raise the value of their currency to go with double digit annual GDP increase- good for them but bad for the rest of the world selling stuff to them. Of course they look out for their own interests at all costs-as opposed to us.

Rob- except you’re forgetting the space program (the orginal NASA, JFK version that is)-and the German government’s wunderbar solar program which is taking almost literally the entire production of the U.S. solar firms “First Solar” (with stock valued at like around 250) and “Nanosolar”. Also, the Nellis AFB 140 acre solar installation, as well as recent U.S. Army green tech./green vehicle installation announcements (which I posted awhile ago) at various bases- and all the state mandates for certain percent of power to be green by certain year, and the recent renewed 8 year fed. solar tax credit. Without various govts. “help”, green tech. wouldn’t be thriving near as much as now. So “govt., for lack of a better word, is/can be good “-govt. incentives, not direct subsidizes. Check this out also (wind fans !): Aerotecture International- check out their neat horizontal wind turbines for buildings, looks like they have clear plastic “vanes”-photos show installation on a Chicago building (perfect Windy City symbolic gesture) by Helmut Jahn- a big cat from way back in the Chicago architecture world. As for Detroit needing $25 billion to save them and to go green with cars- I say give them $35 billion. Our esteemed federal govt. is, ultimately, definitely more than half responsible for getting us into this mess-so the jokers need to spend whatever it takes via finding/printing more little green pieces of paper to clean it up. Print, baby, print !

GMs latest corporate strategy = beg for a handout

Even if GM manages to persuade the feds to hand over more cash, they (GM) will use that money to shift production to lower cost labor markets, such as Mexico, China, and Eastern Europe. That means that GM will close plants in the U.S. & Canada, and layoff employees at those plants. Even with a large federal government handout, GM will eventually go bankrupt because it lacks effective leadership (and has lacked it for a long time). Trying to change course for GM at this point is like trying to turn a supertanker with a toothpick. GM just has too much inertia to change course in enough time to miss the iceberg. GM burned through $6.9 billion dollars in cash in the third quarter of this year, which leaves them with less than $13 billion in cash, by my estimate. They are required to maintain cash reserves of at least $14 billion in order to meet federal regulations.

It is well within the realm of possibility that we will see GM file for chapter 11 before the end of 2008. The restructuring that would ensue could involve selling off valuable brands such as Corvette, Cadillac, Saab, Holden, and Vauxhall-Opel (let’s face it, nobody will buy Hummer in this environment). GM is quickly running out of options, and it appears that top execs feel their best shot is to beg for a bailout. Will it happen? I have no idea… We’ll just have to stay tuned.

What’s with all these guys driving Teslas who “can’t drive” anyway ?-running into back of a truck then a car and now this. Must have been a pretty sharp curve to lose it hydroplaning at 60 mph-I don’t know about the rest of you , but I’ve driven in snow & rain and never come close to losing it at speeds which would wreck the car-because, like the rest of you no doubt, I also am very careful driving in rain & snow. I haven’t heard anything about GM top execs. cutting their salaries to $1 per year for the duration-when William Clay Ford was running Ford that was his salary. Instead GM is turning off lights more and all that. Personally I think that since the fed. govt. is a full co-culprit in the meltdown with Wall St. , they should fork over whatever cash it takes to bail out Detroit. Jobs loses now are already absurd, Detroit failing would sink everything. I heard that sometime in 2009 GM would be rid of some of its “legacy costs” and be competitive again- or more competitive- re. that. Let’s face it-there’s jackasses running loose all over this country: congress, Wall St., Enron before that, and all the companies that unleash their lobbyist armies on the rest of us- yep: muleheads everywhere. No reason at all to let the muleheads destroy any more human jobs-humans need those little green pieces of paper. Print, donkeys, print !

vfx,

thanks for pointing out the Washington Post article, it sounds promising. Let’s see what happens.

Gabe, like this old blues?

Don’t buy no car from where the sun don’t shine. (repeat)
Detroit City ain’t no friend of mine.

They got they cars usin’ too much gas.
(repeat)
They top execs got they head up they ass.

(chorus)
They rich, though. Yeah they rich.
And we got to pay for they mistakes.

I don’t like the blues-BBC News came across a catchy ditty, per: You Tube “Obama Hardy song”.

When some Germans built their failed experimental solar chimney project back in the eighties, they built it in Spain.

Gabe, I was going to call it Sun Don’t Shine, but EV Blues is good too.

For those who do like the blues, here’s a follow-up on the Albert King – SRV clip I posted a while back: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9FlaY1P7mkc&feature=related

Could there be a strong inverse correlation between liking the blues and liking the Aptera?

It looks like the core of the mystery of the Aptera’s repulsion/attraction for different people doesn’t reside in music appreciation. A better guess on my part might have been a knowledge of physics and its effect on individual aesthetics. In addition to stability and safety concerns, the car would be much more at home at Burning Man than at Bonneville. Anyway, it’s all in good fun.

Except for the waiting. There’s a theory that the main difference caused by being financially comfortable, instead of just getting by, is the increased intolerance for waiting. Governmental institutions, physicians, and now airlines seem to try to emphasize their superiority, relative importance and lack of respect for their customers by routinely making them wait.

A somewhat similar theory is the pump and switch theory: the more affluent a person becomes, the more that person’s life is impacted negatively by the failures of pumps and switches.

Gabe, you’re right that I was a little tongue-in-cheek in describing the making people wait phenomenon as a completely intentional cause, when what I was interested in was the effect. Such things amuse me from time to time. But you certainly know that being forced to wait has a powerful psychological effect on you, and it would be wrong to suppose that no one in power has noticed that, or used it for intimidation, etc.

“Philosophers all start out by trying to prove that previous philosophers were fools, and they often succeed.” -Mencken, approx.

The God is Dead, etc. arguments aren’t at all compelling to me, although it’s certainly true that an important reason for the original popularity of religions is their elevation of the status of people above that of slaves or farm animals.

A case could be made the other way, that life for most people in developed countries has become much less dehumanizing in the modern world. Primitive cultures have been found to be full of disgusting and dehumanizing practices like slavery, torture, mutilation and human sacrifice. Consider the parts of the world where religious fundamentalism is in power today.

“The worst government is the most moral. One composed of cynics is often very tolerant and human, but when fanatics are on top there is no limit to opression.” -Mencken

It’s certainly true that powerful dehumanizing forces have been at work in modern times. One is the rise to power of the corporations, http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=+%22corporation+movie%22+site%3Avideo.google.com&__q=&btnG=Google+Search&lr=&dur=3&dis_ft=&so=0&num=100#

Another is the application of the techniques of mass psychology, http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=+%22century+of+self%22+site%3Avideo.google.com&__q=&btnG=Google+Search&lr=&dur=3&dis_ft=&so=0&num=100#

Another is basing our economic lives on the trashing of the earth’s natural resources to produce and sell a bunch of junk that gets thrown out within six months. We’re told that if we stop buying or even slow down, that our economies will crash and burn and we’ll live miserable lives.

http://www.storyofstuff.com/

It’s impossible to do justice to any of these subjects in a short note. They’re largely matters of opinion, and hard to quantify. And it may not be wise to dwell upon them, because they can be depressing.

Fisker cars (press release) announced opening of Detroit office: “34,000 sq. ft., employing up to 200 engineers and designers”. Wonder if some will be from closed Tesla office? – said they have financing from Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield, Byers- superior to Telsa backing ?

I just watched this speech by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1569

At first I was excited that the new administration is planning to strongly encourage alternative energy and plug-in cars. I’ve been a big fan of Google until I read the following.

1. “And of course you need that smart grid in order to get the benefits that we’re getting from all the hybrids and all the plug-ins and all the batteries that we’re busy building.”

2. “It’s very important that you have a network of grid (sic) where the car can sense when things are cheap.”

Those seem to me to be blatant self-serving lies, since Google has a partnership with GE which hopes to build the smart grid. Our government would seemingly have to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars on top of our huge existing debt, and pay a huge amount of interest for an unneccesary system. Shouldn’t Mr. Schmidt disqualify himself from being a governmental advisor because of his conflict of interest?

As is well known, EVs and plug-in hybrids work very well with the existing grid, which wouldn’t need an increase in capacity to serve them since almost all of the charging is done at off-peak hours.

He says that the smart grid would be a lot like the internet. I guess that means that it enables V2G and can let your car know when it’s nighttime. The existing grid already integrates multiple power sources very well. Not much bang for the huge smart grid buck.

The most annoying part of it for me is that it implies that no benefit is possible from EVs and plug-in hybrids without financing and waiting for Mr. Schmidt’s cash cow to be built.

Some of the pundits on T.V. and in the papers say not to bail out Detroit. “Dock these chimps a week’s pay for nappin’ on the job”. Yeah, right- go ahead and unemploy millions of people all down the food chain all for the stupidity of a very few at the top in business and govt.-brilliant. Some pundit mentioned “retraining”-oh yeah, right, dream on -like Aerosmith even. As for Detroit being out of it all the time, witness that Detroit invented the Mini-van, and the “common SUV” and the retro-trend (via the PT Cruiser-which led to good cars like the Mini, reincarnated VW Bug , and the quite nice new Mustang-among others.)- foreign car companies joined in on all these trends. Also, GM at one time was out front with the EV-1 Impact-and their wiz kid Alan Cocconi led directly to Tesla and the current feeding frenzy of coming li-ion powered cars. I rest my case. Main trouble with this country is in who often filters to the top in companies and govt. ( and in T.V. and newspaper commentary positions too)-period.

TJ, excellent point about our government having no other choice than to bail out Detroit. Dumping a few million jobs is not a realistic option for them. Sometimes I fear that the auto company executives let that fact play heavily into their operational strategy. A popular mantra for the times is “privatization of profit, socialization of risk”.

Good point about Detroit having an illustrious past, too. For almost a century Detroit led the world in making low cost comfortable, powerful, dependable cars.

Shai Agassi interview: http://www.evworld.com/article.cfm?storyid=1572

First page of 1997 Tesla history by Shnayerson: http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2007/05/tesla200705?currentPage=1

TEG’s 1997 Tesla club post I mentioned: http://74.125.113.104/search?q=cache:fDLWx3-io1gJ:www.teslamotorsclub.com/tesla-motors/302-tesla-history-articles-those-writing-book.html+%22alan+cocconi%22&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=101&gl=us

In news: the cities of Philadelphia, Atlanta and Phoenix now want a piece of the $700 billion federal bailout money. Trouble iz , I think a lot of cities are living in la-la land since their pay scales are too high, and on top of that they offer nice pensions, health care, whatever-and a number of these jobs allow for overtime, which is being abused (according to a recent local investigation of T.V.-and no doubt this is also a national issue)-this really jackups govt. pay, like double even. Meanwhile, back at the U.S. ranch, income disparity and poverty levels rank the U.S. 27th out of 30 (30 being worst) among industrialized countries studied recently by a group called OECD- and a heck of a lot of people “in the private sector” have no pensions or health care, or 401(k)’s even. No only that, govt. jobs produce absolutely nothing- they are just “monitoring” type jobs-be it cops, firemen, city agency people of all types-whoever. Not only that, a lot of govt. jobs are very safe- they will be the last jobs to go in a terrible downturn- and a lot of these jobs are absolutely bulletproof- since govt. will never be totally allowed to fail. Given all of this, the pay in govt. jobs in general is out of whack. Wouldn’t everyone love to have the “govt. job M.O. type set-up” in their line of work. Many of the people losing jobs now-at Tesla, in Silicon Valley-wherever- actually PRODUCE something. These jobs are “valued added” to the economy. So I say it’s high time that the govt. job sector gets frickin’ real-and this includes the public universities. I saw a list in the local paper of something like the most current 350 university hirings locally over the past 3 years or so. The salaries being paid were actually incredible- almost all of them starting at $100,000 per year and going up (with all the abovementioned perks, of course). Meanwhile is TUITON cost staying even or going down ? Is the need for student loans going down?-no of course not. Yeah, feather the “govt. employee nest” while the nests of the rest of the society as a whole get rattier- brilliant ! About time the govt. types wake up and smell the reality around them-but then what incentive do they have to do this, unless the state legislatures or governors step in and slap them around ?

Steve-nice Business Week article- I skimmed thru it, will read it in detail later. Right now I’m licking my wounds since Cal just lost to Oregon State- too bad Cal QB Aaron Rodgers (now Green Bay QB) couldn’t play for 8 years instead of 4. Need a second coming of Steve Bartkowski – or Joe Roth.

Steve-watched the video-the Impact is still a neat car- Studebaker did the same rear window in like 1948 (or was it ‘46 ?). Wally Rippel should have been the “Musk with the money guy” for Tesla- or Howard Hughes, if he had been a car guy instead of a plane guy-and could be brought back. CEO Roger Smith of GM at least did one thing right- but he was ousted soon after. It’s something how this country works in fits and starts, bits and pieces- which ultimately often get smashed or diverted “by corp. American weasels in suits”. Imagine if the weasels morphed into friendly, fast moving cheetahs (beloved by almost all- Thompson Gazelles being the main exception). Then everybody would be on the same page. But- too many hyenas in the status quo camp-laughing at us, not with us. Hope Obama fixes this on the political front-now he’s consulting & dealing with a lot of Clinton era people. Picking Hillary as sec. of state would be dumb – what, there’s no “new” names out there in this big country- or what ? They say it’s in line with the Lincoln M.O. of putting former rivals in his admin. Except in this case she refers back to a whole other admin. herself-bad move, I say- why come across as “Clinton II” ? If he’s for “change” then change it up.

Steve,

thanks for the link to “FutureCrush”. I hadn’t seen it before and I found it very interesting. It was great to hear the inside story from Wally.

Re: GM & taxpayer bailout. So, what happens if the US taxpayer does end up bailing out the General? Does it end there? Will all those jobs be saved? The answers (IMHO) are “No” and “No”. GM has lost over $70 billion in the last four years. It’s market cap is currently sitting at $1.84 billion, and it burned through $6.9 billion in cash in 3Q 08 (which is double what I estimated in a previous “the sky is falling” rant…). Even if the US Treasury forked over $25 billion tomorrow, that would only extend GM’s life for another 12 months or so (at their current cash-burn rate). In order for GM to significantly reduce it’s operating costs, it would have to shift most of it’s production to low cost labor markets, which essentially means it would have to use the bailout money to layoff American workers… I’m guessing that wouldn’t go down too well from a political perspective. Even with these drastic measures, GM would be back knocking at the US taxpayer’s door in 12 months looking for another $25 billion, or so, to stay afloat. The only difference will be that the US taxpayer will be less inclined to prop up a company that shipped all those manufacturing out of the US in the last 12 months.
I do not envy the next Administration’s task. Politically, they have to prop up GM in the short term, but in the long term, they will have to cut it loose…

BTW, it’s kind of ironic that the Republican candidate and his sidekick were accusing Obama of being a “Socialist” during the campaign. And now we have a Republican administration creating a socialist-style banking system… It’s a funny old world, but I wouldn’t want to have to paint it…

Chris- I read that sometime in 2009 GM is scheduled to be rid of its “legacy costs” dragging them down like an albatross. A Senator Shelby of Alabama said ” Detroit is a dinosaur that doesn’t innovate and build good cars” -wrong- they actually have innovated over the years and they do build some really good cars- problem often is, besides their “fits and starts” programs and bad management, that the cars cost too much for a lot of avg. people to afford or want to buy. There was news a few weeks ago about the Defense Dept. going to buy 4000 EV or plug-in cars- well there’s a nice order for Detroit to get, for starters. Now Obama should say: “let’s triple that order” if possible-and how about the Navy, Coast Guard, Air Force & Marines ? Let’s just have D.C. now also say: o.k. we’re going to replace every fed. govt. fleet car with a plug-in hybrid, ASAP- there’s more orders. Then D.C. could say “and we’re going to help states do the same”. If the fed. govt. wants to fund infrastructure work, like “they’re all talking about” then fund,in this way, what drives on the frickin’ infrastructure too. Then the whole system is new and shiny and up to speed. Of course give Detroit bailout money with some nice stipulations: like the UAW needs to get with it, or else-and the CEO’s need to get paid like $1 per year “for the duration” and other upper management needs to get real on pay too-and whatever else you can find about the companies that needs fixing-some experts surely know it all. If Detroit needs to come back in a year for more cash, well that would be due to the stupid fed. govt. ultimately not getting the recession over- the one they definitely helped cause- yeah, that one. If it takes 2 or 3 years to do it-so be it: D.C. ULTIMATELY let the disaster happen- they had their warnings. But noooo- guys like Phil Graham and all his like-minded “whining fellow travelers” (whining about “lordy , lordy us greedy rich ain’t making enough on stock market returns-we need some clever new totally unregulated investment vehicles-lordy just LISTEN to us whine ! )- had to have it all their way, no matter what the danger to the rest of the country. People in the know, like regulator Brooksley Born, were proverbially screaming about the dangers. So,here’s the deal congress: Detroit is finally crawling out from under its legacy costs,and they’re actually making some good cars-and trying to go plug-in hybrid. This is not to excuse their past bad management and lobbying to keep the status quo at all costs to the bitter end (such as trying to sue Calif. to stop their mileage mandating- and THAT B.S. of course would have to go in a bailout)- BUT you jokers in congress and your fellow jokers on Wall St. ” are calling the kettle black”. Talk about “mismanagement and status quo lobbying” ! YOU should talk about the jackasses in Detroit- look in the mirror- see that mulehead staring back at you ? Get a 2×4 and whack it in the head- instead of whacking millions of workers with jobs tied into Detroit over the head . The place and time for the buck to stop on that M.O. is here and now.

Chris, did you notice at about 7:20 of Future Crush that Linda had a sign in front of her RAV4-EV: “Save GM from bankruptcy”? That seemed pretty cheeky back then, but now ….

At first I expect the government will focus on trying to stop the bleeding with their bailouts, not presuming to provide any cures. Later on a lot could be done with incentives, rebates, contracts to meet specifications, testing and R&D labs, etc. The government programs of the depression era and WW2 could provide some ideas.

I just hope it won’t turn out to be badly misdirected like the military-industrial complex debacles warned about by Eisenhower, and that the focus will be on the timely creation of green cars, batteries, and power plants.

I suspect that a great deal of the money will be directed into burying thousands of miles of extremely high voltage cables and the like, unfortunately.

A lot of bright folks without a strong financial interest should be involved in the planning stages. Perhaps we need an energy and EV czar, not Al Gore but a practical, technical guy to make sure programs pass the smell test. Wally or Martin would be good.

The bleeps on govt. failed to get a handle on the economic meltdown. Every week people need a job and a paycheck- or quite soon there will be a lot more people without the same. As I said from the start (so give me a big, shiny medal) the bailout amount should have been $1.5 trillion not $700 million, and with a quick option for more.

What if the U.S had national healthcare like every other real country in the world ? According to Fortune Magazine online article (from 2007) the biggest problem with the Detroit Big Three is labor costs-and the biggest cost in labor cost is healthcare. They said GM spends $1635 on health care labor costs per car, Toyota spends $215. Regardless of the agreements with UAW per this, which I read will lessen (or almost eliminate ?) the problem sometime in 2009, if this country would have been following the world model for decades then Detroit wouldn’t have always been operating at a big world disadvantage for years-and having to depend sales of big ticket items like SUV’s and pickups. Blame all this on the fed. govt. and the healthcare/drug company lobbyist army. Article also said that currency rates in Japan and elsewhere give advantage for foreign makers. No doubt other countries also over the years have been acting to make it harder for Detroit, for one, to sell over there too- which I read somewhere a few years ago.

I read that Ford is actually in pretty good shape-maybe in part due to their ex-Boeing CEO ? Congress and Wall St. have been living in a glass house for years (at least 8, per the build-up of the current meltdown)-they should talk about Detroit mismangement-seems there’s always a lot of that going around in this country- some would even say Musk (and his board) is an example. As for diehard red state Repub. Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama- he who said that Detroit is a mismanaged dinosaur that should be allowed to fail, I say: ditto , and then some, for your “business” called congress, and Wall too , good buddy- 10/4 that- come back!? Consider also the fact that these foreign car companies make cars in Alabama: Toyota, Honda,Hyundai and Mercedes.Maybe THIS is tainting Shelby’s vision, perhaps- on the theory of “what’s bad for Detroit is good for Alabama” !? Shelby is a perfect example of the “not look past your own nose and narrow, dumbed-down self-interests” attitude of red state America. He also is an example , per wikipedia, in that on an environmental scale of 0 to 15 (15 being best)developed by a republican environ. advocacy group , Shelby’s rating is 0. But- he’s been in congress since 1978, so it’s obvious that his nice job is perfectly safe-while he smuggly toys with destroying millions of other people’s livelihoods/lives. Also, if Shelby ever does get “unelected”, you can bet (your back forty mule) that his backers over all those years will find him a nice, plush, lifetime new job somewhere in the Alabama private sector,top of the food chain variety no less.

It took Thomas Friedman of the N.Y. Times awhile, but he finally “sees it my way” ™ , per editorial today: “…If you are going to fight a global financial panic like this, you have to go at it with overwhelming force-an overwhelming stimulus that gets people shopping again and an overwhelming recapitalization of the banking system that gets it lending again… no it’s not fair (rescuing some of the culprits as well as the innocent bystanders)…but fairness is not on the menu anymore. We’ll deal with that later. Right now we need to throw everything we can at this problem to make sure this recession doesn’t spiral down into a depression. This is no time for half measures.” You’re late, Friedman- but better that than never.

It must be good news, proving that California has lots of money after all the complaining.

So people paying $100,000 are going to collect $5000 from the rest of us?

We have done this song before, but the inevitability that coal will power the electric cars sank in again when I revisited solar for my house. I had heard that manufacturing cost of cadmium telluride was nearing $1 per watt, so once again I tried. A preliminary result showed a staggering installation cost for not a lot of peak power.

My house is in Sunnyvale CA, and where could one find a more likely place to get energy from the sun? Well First Solar’s California installer, Solar City, rejected me because of “nearby trees” which they wanted me to know might disappoint me when it came to getting power out of the system.

I have been carefully cultivating those trees, along with help from the city, for 25 years so as to give my house an efficient winter time solar heating and summer time non-heating benefits. They now boot me out of the program because I might lose a few early morning hours on the relevant part of my roof.

All of this is to point out that things are never quite as simple as they seem.

So my electric car will, unarguably, be coal powered.

Jim- there is a solar panel company called Solyndra that makes panels that capture diffuse/scattered solar from whatever direction, can be flat on roof or whatever -check out website. Ariz. senator Jon Kyl said on PBS that Detroit has problems re. costs, management, etc. such that it would be better to go bankrupt to reorganize. Oh yeah ?- has he checked his company – “Fed. Govt., Inc.”- lately ?- those guys REALLY deserve to go down that path. Also-then why not have let all of the financial bailed -out companies , like AIG go bankrupt too ? No- that would have been “too disastrous”. Guess what: what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, so just bail out Detroit from something your Fed. Govt., Inc. more than half caused and get it over with, Kyl. Detroit does make some nice cars- I like the Ford Flex-especially with sunroof (but as usual interior could be a little more interesting).The new 2009 Mustang has been tweaked a little- one nest option is a total glass roof (photo on website). They should have a further option to make front part operable. The upcoming Ford Fiesta is also quite nice for a small sedan. The GM Volt could be more interesting, but it isn’t bad. The Buick Enclave is nice too, but out of my price range. Once Detroit is rid of their legacy costs-by 2009-10, then we’ll be talking. Any car company could do nice designs, if they focus on that and turn the designers loose-so that’s all equalized. Actually I think a lot of Toyota cars are boring (like, you’d think somehow they could have made the Prius nicer looking and still have the CD value)- and same for BMW, and Porsche hasn’t really changed their design tune in a long time-the Cayman is nice, Boxster o.k., but kind of dated by now. Porsche’s other designs sure ain’t worth the bucks-not enough design bang for the buck there.

Steve Uhlir,

You misunderstand. I am not happy about the coal situation. If you are right, I am happy.

But I am a skeptical person. Maybe just realistic. So I would like to know where you get your power production data. PGE does not respond to my request. I have looked for it on the web without success. I can’t figure out who to ask at CARB or California Energy Commission.

Also trying to be a good analyst, I would rather not guess or hypothecate as if I knew what I was talking about. I have looked at real data, though not from our own state, on the total power production, hour by hour for all types of electric generation. It happens to be from the Province of Ontario, and they put it all on the IESO website. See: http://reports.ieso.ca/public/GenOutputCapability/PUB_GenOutputCapability_20080916.xml. Of course this is not California, but it is applicable information about how power systems work.

I have studied this quite a lot, and have tentatively concluded that Ontario which has surplus hydro at night can respond to an incremental load with very clean power. When water is fully used, they will cut back on selling power to Quebec at night for less than coal power prices and continue to power electric vehicles. Great, expect Quebec will then start burning more coal. (The reason they sell power to Quebec at night is that Quebec has storage capacity, which I think means either they use less of their own water at night, saving it for the day, or they pump water up into reservoirs.) When they ultimately run low on hydro in Ontario, I conclude they will undoubtedly add coal to the fires already burning in their huge coal facilities, which run at night at about one quarter of capacity, since this is the economically sensible choice.

To the extent that they have combined cycle natural gas capacity, and subject to the price of natural gas, they might bring that on line.

Don’t be misled by the cogeneration facilities that use natural gas, since this is a way to make natural gas competitive. They are running full tilt as things stand, so they will not respond to incremental loads.

All their nuclear facilities crank full on day and night and there is no more left to do for incremental loads.

To be sure, Ontario, like California, has politicians mucking around in the business. There is a subsidized activity to build a combined cycle natural gas facility which will be charged to ratepayers or taxpayers.

PGE charged me $6.95 on my last bill for “public programs.” I gather this is to pay for rebates for other people. At this level, it does not really matter, but the nonsense is that if there is significant scale to it so that these pretend clean things matter, the public programs charge will have to be huge.

I would be glad to hear differing conclusions, and would certainly be very interested in real California data. (Please alert me on email at jim@miastrada.com if you find it. Anybody. Otherwise I will check back here when I think of it.)

Jim,

I don’t know whether you’ve seen this, or whether it helps alleviate some of your concerns about how your electricity is generated, but I hope that it helps…

http://www.pge.com/myhome/edusafety/systemworks/electric/energymix/

All the best,

Chris H.

Steve U. and Chris, thanks for the California electric power source information. I tried and failed to find it recently, but I did learn that the US as a nation gets less than half of its electric power from coal. Another interesting fact is that despite all the talk about France getting around 80% of its electric power from nuclear, the US leads the world in nuclear electric power. It adds up to only around 20% for us because our total power use is much greater.

U.S. gets 49% of its electric power from coal , as of 2006- per U.S. Energy Information Admin. (EIA website). The next highest power source is natural gas at 20%, then nuclear at 19%. This accounts for “coal trains miles long” always on the tracks. Steve- Porsche has a good design deal with the 911’s “tweaking of the same basic design”, while other car companies have to generate whole new designs often. The Cayman has more personality, and it’s cheaper- that’s my favorite Porsche. Talk in congress about “dinosaur Detroit, mismanagement and high worker pay” ignores the fact that the U.S. institution in need most of reorganization thru bankruptcy is the fed. govt. For one example, a couple of years ago CBS’ “60 Minutes” had a story on the head cost watchdog guy in the defense dept.- since retired (in disgust as it were). He said for years that the GAO has given up in trying to track and even get an AMOUNT on the billions of dollars “gone missing/unaccounted for” each year. So: everyone in congress is overpaid, many deserve to lose their jobs due to incompetence. They have full govt. paid health care, of course-but they should lose this-like the rest of the country. Then every govt. agency should by rights declare bankruptcy so that outside court appointed investigators and accountants can FINALLY find out “where all the missing money went and is going” and can also finally force “restructuring into a sustainable business model” (the same knock against Detroit), while selling off hopelessly inefficient, messed up components. What’s good for the rather large sized Detroit goose is good for the fed. govt. Godzilla sized gander.

Jim-no, since the earth’s core is molten-it’s hot down there- you’d have to ask a geologist but I think it will remain just as hot for a few billion more years. As a side note: all the Hawaiian islands were formed from the same lava source outlet on the sea bed. What happened was (and is) as the crust moves per (”tectonic plate drift”) another island is formed. The Big Island of Hawaii is the latest, but it has drifted from the main lava source spot (although branches of this still make for lava eruptions, only on the Big Island) and a new Hawaiian island is now growing under the waves off shore of the Big Island- to surface in the few thousand years. The older Hawaiian islands are smaller than the big island due to erosion. Without lava we wouldn’t be here-they say that when Mars’ molten core cooled (maybe since it’s half the diameter of earth ?) Mars lost it’s magnetic field-which is supposedly maintained by the swirl of lava. Without a magnetic field, in time the solar wind from the sun blew Mars’ atmosphere away-without lava the same would happen on earth. Also, without Jupiter blocking asteroids (and comets ?) from hitting earth more frequently, we wouldn’t be here either -and if it weren’t for bacteria making oxygen over eons we never would have been either. I wonder, with huge mass use of geothermal all over the earth, if there might be a very slight core cool down-but the hot water would be pumped backed down, so the loss would be minimized. A geologist would probably say that even with huge geothermal use there would be like zero cool down. Until recently I never knew of the huge U.S. geothermal potential- no doubt thanks a lot to the fossil fuel peddler’s influence.

We haven’t heard from Martin since November 3rd. I hope he’s OK.

Anybody heard what he’s up to?

Martin sez:

Sorry – I have been swamped with this and that. Secret projects, busted pool filter, etc.

I’m just happy to hear that everything is OK

Did the ground squirrels ever come back?

What, me worry ? I’m not happy ’cause everything definitely isn’t o.k. I wonder if the ground sloths have come back. Recent news sez it is now possible to bring the wooly mammoths back. Now someone has to bring the economy back. Not enough was done, not enough is being done. Many in congress think Detroit should go bankrupt-”it would be the best thing”. Too bad the fed. govt. can’t go bankrupt- they’re normally more than twice as bad as Detroit at their business, and now they’re even worse.

Ground squirrel update: A pair of Cooper’s Hawks moved into one of our oak trees. We also had a tremendous breeding season for coyotes. On top of that, we have the world’s largest bobcat living in our neighborhood. The thing looks like a mountain lion with his tail bobbed. Between all of these predators, the ground squirrels seem to be missing, at least out of our yard. By the way, our cats do not go outside!

Mayors Aim to Make San Francisco Bay Area the Electric Vehicle Capital of the U.S.

Carolyn,

thanks for the update on the ground squirrels…

“Sometimes it’s a hard world for the little things”
H.I. McDunnough, Raising Arizona, 1987

T.J.,

funny you should mention Lee Iacocca and the bail out. He just made a recorded presentation for the celebration of the Minivan’s 25th Anniversary, and I believe he mentioned the bailout for the Detroit 3. I can’t seem to find a link to it online, but it was on BNN’s “Car Business” earlier tonight. Here’s a news story about it:

http://www.financialpost.com/story.html?id=980144

NPR story: Electric Car Manufacturer Hopes To Generate Sales

Good article on D3 bailout:

http://www.globeinvestor.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20081121.wcover1121/GIStory/

It looks like Martin’s car is back at TM’s Menlo Park store, perhaps for the transmission upgrade.

http://flickr.com/photos/sfyoshi/3051135660/in/set-72157609692711531/

TJ, although we aren’t often on the same page with respect to style, here’s a fun article criticizing unfortunate automotive styling makeovers. To look at another car, click the appropriate box immediately above the photos.

I agree that the makeover is worse with all but one, with which I disagree strongly because it fixes one of the most awful styling features ever. Can you guess which one? What are your picks?

Steve- the new Scion XB is definitely nicer. I think the VW is nicer too, but ditch the chrome.

Ohhh, right, the electric door latches… I forgot about those…

TJ, I was relieved to see the bent and broken look of the Viper profile go into the dustbin of ignominy. To my eye the new xB is pretentiously ugly instead of simple, practical, lightweight ugly. The guys responsible for the grilles of recent VWs should join that wretched little man who’s been ruining BMWs, to do a makeover on the Aztek in an attempt to displace the Citroen Ami 6 from its long-held title of the world’s ugliest production automobile ever (it even made the French gag).

Chris, speaking of bizarre economic twists, a while back you complimented me on being honest enough to admit that I was clueless about how the price of oil is determined, even after I read a Wiki article on the subject. I may have said that I believed that OPEC no longer had that power.

Do you know of anyone who knew enough to predict the sudden reduction of prices to less than half of their previous value?

Have you been following that situation? What are you hearing? Based on no information, my initial cynical wild guess was that prices would go back up after the election. After that was proven false, my next wild guess in that vein was that the oil companies are perhaps concerned that since Cheney and Rove will no longer be running the show, the new administration may be inclined to punish and/or regulate the oil companies based on their outrageous profiteering. Cheap gasoline may take some of the wind out of their sails. It may also tend to reduce the pressure to provide economic incentives to producers and users of alternative vehicles and energy sources.

Oil prices are not low.

The price changes are pretty consistent. They always take at least two steps forward and one step back. It’s a cycle that the public buys every time. The first rise brings screaming and yelling then when it drops a collective sigh of relief -even though the net result is still a major increase.

Overall they will keep it “low” for awhile now while the new administration tries to enact programs to get us off oil. I bet it even drops more to kill new legislation attempts. Bill Clinton said something like this recently on the campaign trail.

vfx, interesting theory on oil prices. You almost lost me with your lead sentence. I assumed it was just rhetoric, because of reading this from Wiki: On November 20, 2008, oil was trading at $49 a barrel, one third of the peak price reached four months earlier.

I saw you got some ink at AutoBlogGreen for pointing out the message posted recently here by Albert Lam, a former CEO of Lotus who is now associated with Zap and related businesses. Good work! I initially thought the post by Lam was a fake because of its poor command of english, before I learned that a Malaysian concern has a controlling interest in Lotus. Incidentally, GM once owned Lotus, but sold it in another era of near GM bankruptcy around 1993. If that hadn’t happened, it would have made the Tesla story more interesting.

Steve-yeah, the old Viper was kind of funky, I like the new Scion “for what it is”. The new Ford Flex, “another boxy design rendition”, is nice too-but $10,000 too expensive-with a price at around $18,000 now they’d be talking. Here’s a neat transportation design to check out: go to the S.S. United States Foundation website and the S.S. United States Conservancy website. That design icon is plain lucky to have not been scrapped. I’d green that ship to the max.: Solyndra solar, pop-up/tilt up wind turbines for in -port power, run on algae bio-fuel , and then turn the ship in an eco/expedition style cruise ship in JV with The Cousteau Society. This type of cruising is now only high end: like Lindblad Cruises in Assoc. with the National Geographic Society (check out their small ships on website-could/would get seasick on those in the rough seas of Cape Horn & Cape of Good Hope where some go)- need a bigger ship like the S.S. United States to run such cruises “for the rest of us”. When I was a kid in N.Y.C. I went on the United States when it was in port (they let visitors on)-still got a collection of plastic United States Lines swizzle sticks, with eagles on top-in red and blue. The ship has a great power to weight ratio (top speed of over 50 mph-still holds westbound Atlantic Ocean crossing speed record). The entire superstructure is aluminum-2000 tons of it.

Filmmaker Chris Paine talks about his new Tesla on his blog: http://revengeoftheelectriccar.com/

John Wayland borrowed A123 batteries from Killacycle, and his old Datsun 1200 sedan EV conversion went 11.50 and 110 mph for a street legal electric quarter mile record, further down the page.

Back in the 90s, Stan Ovshinsky sneaked one of his NiMH battery packs to GM engineers, who regeared an EV-1, took off the rearview mirrors, and set an electric car speed record of 183 mph. Who’ll be first to work up a higher gear for a Tesla and try it at the lakes and Bonneville?

That Shai Agassi link works if you select in on the left of the Google video page, but this one is more direct: http://video.google.com/videosearch?hl=en&q=+%22shai+agassi+on+electric+car%22&__q=&btnG=Search+Videos&lr=&dur=&st=&dis_ft=&so=0&num=10#

I can not restrain myself from commenting on the Agassi stuff.

The real joke is that “Better Place” would be “better” if the promoters took a class in physics and did not cut the lectures on thermodynamics. Some particular attention should be given to the Second Law Thermodynamics.

There is another law that should be recognized which is that promoters and venture capitalists do not invest time and money without expecting large paybacks.

Electricity is a carrier of energy. Wires and batteries are needed. But also needed are sources. In the present power generating mix in the United States, coal will be the most likely fuel used to respond to increased demand of electric cars. If natural gas stays at its present price, it will be used if government forces ratepayers to subsidize usage of natural gas. But even if the more efficient of the natural gas plants are tapped as the incremental suppliers, there is still a huge amount of heat thrown away by such power plants, and this is purely wasted energy.

I find it particularly amazing that Israel, which relies heavily on coal to make electricity, would be a place that Better Place was sold. I read that they have a potential deal with Egypt to provide natural gas, and sometime in the future this might turn into a natural gas fired power infrastructure. Maybe the solar potential is big there, but I would think it would be better to wait for that to develop a little more before selling battery stations all over the place.

Some years ago a leading venture capitalist told me that they need to see 4-5 times their money back in 4-5 years. Put this in the cost of electric energy and then see how things look. Venture capitalists should look carefully at the wishful thinking in the business plan of “Better Place.” It won’t be much better for a long time.

Of course, there is always the “sustainable” sources switch. So then add the cost of large scale, unsubsidized solar, wind, etc. and “Better Place” looks like a big con game, which will effectively mine government subsidies (and rate payer subsidies) and money from foolish venture capitalists as long as it can get away with it.

Steve-I wonder if the S.S. U.S. steam turbines are suitable for modern use. Most cruise ships use gas turbines- the large ship I was on in Sept.-slightly shorter and less wide than the United States (Celebrity Millenium-built in 2000) had a spare gas turbine on display on the bottom deck (for emergency installation or parts use) it was no bigger than a big jet engine-ship is powered by two of them. Maybe S.S. U.S. engines are good by today’s standards, with some tweaking if necessary ? Said on some website that the ship almost has the power of a nuke aircraft carrier-like around “242,000 shaft H.P. ” Said that while the ship is about the same size as the Queen Mary, all the alum. used-and whatever else- gives it 30,000 tons less weight. Also came across an old graph on a website of “horsepower vs. knots”- the graph started going closer to vertical as knots increased, especially past 38 knots-so maybe wikipedia top speed figure right-but that’s still really moving for a big, regular ship, no ? Per a website I came across, Norwegian Cruise lines in 2007 did a survey of the ship and found it in good shape-and said that it had a future as a cruise ship-this statement was made to Popular Mechanics Mag. which did a story on the ship earlier this year. If I remember right, they bought the ship for $2.6 million -some people pay more than that for a house. The kicker is: it supposedly costs like $1000 per day for the dock berth.

Misc.
ACP and the E Mini: http://www.acpropulsion.com/company/press-releases.php
Getting power from all those waves:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/renewableenergy/3535012/Ocean-currents-can-power-the-world-say-scientists.html
Site: http://www.vortexhydroenergy.com/

Steve, I always rave about “The Car That Could” a great book. I always tell people that it’s so deep about making the car that at the end of the book the car was just about to come out. So easy and fun to mentally write the next chapter(s).

Steve-Ted’s got a website, I dropped him an e-mail about TEA-seems to me like perfect fit with his “Ted’s Montana Grill” buffalo burgers chain (TEA, burgers-it works for me). After all, is not Ted a “wild & crazy guy” ? ( among others).

vfx,

that’s interesting news. It must’ve been a pretty dramatic “disagreement in strategy” to cause DS to walk away from an executive position in a company that has the potential of becoming THE American car company. Maybe he just thinks that EM has finally gone off the deep end…, and he’s getting out while the going is good… Who knows? One thing though, it must’ve been on impulse, or under duress. A carefully planned transition would’ve involved a destination, at least one that wasn’t as vague as “exploring various opportunities that I find out there”.
Maybe TEG can shed some light on the situation.

Well, one thing Martin seems to be doing:
http://www.coulombtech.com/technicaladvisors.php

Very little privacy with the web these days.
……….
Must be an interesting story behind DS leaving, as it doesn’t seem to be to a specific job opportunity. Interesting statement, a lot between the lines.

Not to mention Elon’s version of the announcement:
http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Tesla-Motors-Names-New-Senior/story.aspx?guid=%7BEC389F5C-C55D-49A3-91E9-D2D107B6093B%7D

Tesla doesn’t seem like a very fun place to work these days; the whole culture/vision seems to have changed.
……………..
At least we have a president-elect who welcomes different viewpoints and debate before arriving at a decision.

vfx, thanks for pointing me to (finally) an update on the ACP site. I’ve known about The Car That Could for a long time (a chapter has been on the ACP site, I believe) and tried to buy it once. I also tried to track down a public library copy, without success. Your comments on the Tesla club site inspired me to get serious about owning the book.

Incidentally, I read somewhere (now forgotten) an account, probably by the same author, of taking a spare tire up into the hills to Cocconi for his CRX conversion. The guy subsequently went for a bicycle ride up into the same hills with Alan. Do you know aobut that one?

The stream – vortex – power plant idea isn’t very inspiring to me. It probably belongs on the ocean floor, swimming with the fishes. Which don’t need vortices to swim: their flexible tails can actually push against the water at a suitable angle to propel them forward. It’s too bad that the company couldn’t work buzz words like nano and plasma into their title along with vortex, to make it seem more techie.

TJ, thanks for the tip on the Z. F. Zeppelin rides! The new ones are only about a third the length of the big ones from the past, and hold only a dozen passengers, but I’m going to try to co-ordinate a ride with the next time I’m in the area, probabably for the Monterey prehistoric races. I’ve fantasized about that kind of travel for years.

Here’s an off-the-wall idea of what to do with the S. S. U. S.: anchor it in the gulf stream. Let the water move by it and provide power, instead of the other way around and wasting fuel. Install a lot of solar panels and wind turbines, and huge underwater propellors (instead of those silly vortex things that flop back and forth) to make it a 3-way power plant. The housing could be sold or rented for good bucks, and restaurants, etc. would generate income by serving their needs, and of interested tourists.

kj, thanks for the interesting links.

I meant S.F. Zeppelin rides, for San Francisco, not Z.F. I also misspelled about. Not enough sleep.

Steve- I think that Brin and Page of Google should buy the S.S. U.S. as a company ship- yeah, like, they bought a Boeing 767 in 2005 as a 50 seat company plane-very Abercrombie & Kent. If you’re going to get a company yacht, I say get a REAL one. Yeah-Google could then fill it with company workers for vacation purposes, and floating conference/cruises-like the semi-annual Al Gore SeaGreen Cruise Confab Fest, cruising the Gulf Stream from Florida to Europe- Al would approve of the route since with the Gulf Stream running at 3.9 knots, this will be an apropos fuel saving/environ. friendly cruise route -you’ll save almost 1/4 on “Algore” Brand ™ Algae bio-fuel, while being able to leave the stream for stops at places like Savannah, Bahamas, Bermuda, New England, Newfoundland, Ireland (where I think the stream hits europe) & England. Poifect !

Today I finally received confirmation that my $5k CARB rebate has been processed and will go through. I took delivery of my Roadster on 12/13/08 and submitted the rebate application soon after.

Vfx, it had officially “run out” at the time I submitted my application, but I called the program manager and she encouraged me to apply anyway, just in case more funds became available. Evidently, some did; but just how much, I have no idea. But hey, now all I need to do is cough up another $35k and I can pony up a deposit for the Model S