Re: Consumer subsidy per car
There's the rub. The aim of the electric vehicle subsidies is to encourage investment in electric vehicles, with the assumption that without the subsidies it's a lot harder to replace the incumbent, undesirable technology. Realistically, it's in place to encourage purchase at prices where the money matters, but in terms of outcome, it doesn't matter _that_ much since it selling cells. In fact, you could argue that the value of each Tesla sales is greater because it sells more capacity per car.
However, it should be noted that for _many_ Tesla Model S buyers, the Model S is by far the most expensive car they've bought and for them the $7.5k tax credit makes a large difference.
PS Maybe this article was just Tim experimenting with the Musk/Tesla headline to see how many more eyeballs it would attract than his normal pieces.
Tim's suggestion of teat-sucking is a fair point given that all of the industries they're working in have large subsidies, but while the article recognizes that government is subsidizing in what it considers to be the public interest, it basically says that it's wasteful (because dogma), rather than actually analysing the companies to decide whether they've provided value for money.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
