1x Tsla Discussion Threads

[hosede] 07/5/2024 22:59

Miles driven per annum can easily be found from MOT certificates

[cfb2] 07/5/2024 21:13

hpcg: I did some research before responding to hosede. I assume you're referring to Article 24 of the Chicago Convention? I've been reading articles about it and seems it is often used as a defence for why duty can't be charged on fuel. What it actually says is an aircraft can't be taxed for fuel and goods retained, not what has been added.

Since 2003 the EU say fuel can be taxed for domestic flights. Netherlands tried to do it but stopped in 2012 because of low revenue from the tax. Seems that multiple EU countries need to do it simultaneously for it to work.

Your direct road pricing would require tracking for the miles driven. Not a bad idea but I can see problems with it being accepted on privacy grounds. Basing it on vehicle axle weight is sensible as the heavier the vehicle the more damage done to the road.

[hpcg] 07/5/2024 20:42

Aircraft fuel tax 0 rate is set by international treaty. It would take an immense amount of work to change. On the other hand many countries have some form of tax on tickets, which amounts to the same thing.

Direct road pricing on a vehicle axle weight x distance driven calculation is inevitable in many countries, and the technology is all there to do it.

[cfb2] 07/5/2024 18:56

Quite right too hosede! That would cost the EU parliament members more money when they took their skiing vacations.

Supposedly it's because aircraft fly from one country to the next and it would require a unilateral tax across the world or they would all tank up in a country that didn't have the tax. Tanking up unnecessarily would supposedly result in higher emissions because the aircraft would be flying with excess weight due to fuel.

This is of course complete BS because most aircraft couldn't land if they had all that excess fuel. The real reason is that short haul flying would not be able to compete with other forms of transport if the fuel was taxed on a like for like basis. With the extra security at check in some of the short journey times are similar to a car. I'm expecting robotaxis to eat into these short haul flights.

[hosede] 07/5/2024 15:58

Yet no-one as far as I know taxes aircraft fuel!

[cfb2] 07/5/2024 11:30

The one thing governments dislike is falling tax revenues; they are like drug addicts looking for a bigger and bigger fix. The "problem" with EVs is the energy to charge might come from solar cells and that doesn't generate tax. Last year cars generated £35 billion in tax so you can see where the concern is coming from.

[simon gordon] 07/5/2024 10:45

FT - 7/5/24:

...fuel tax collection has been falling for some time due to increasing fuel efficiency of internal combustion engine vehicles. The growing prevalence of EVs on the road is putting extra pressure on an important source of government revenues.

By 2030 EVs are forecast to displace 6mn barrels a day of global oil consumption, according to the International Energy Agency. Demand in 2023 was 102mn b/d.

IEA data shows the shift to EVs displaced $10bn in revenues from petrol and diesel taxes globally last year, net of modest gains from new electricity tax revenue. The net loss is projected to rise to $110bn by 2035 if countries meet their electrification targets, robbing governments of vital funds that are often ringfenced to pay for road maintenance and transport improvements.

Europe, where countries tend to charge higher taxes on petrol and diesel compared with the US and China, made up 60 per cent of global revenue losses last year. While countries will claw back some funding in electricity taxes, the revenue is marginal compared with the loss in fuel taxes, the agency said.

As a growing number of governments set deadlines for the phaseout of combustion engine cars, policymakers are being forced to consider unpopular tax reforms.

Last month New Zealand introduced road use charges based on distance travelled for EVs and plug-in hybrid vehicles for the first time, saying the policy was badly needed to raise revenues for road maintenance as fuel tax collections fell.

Owners of light EVs face charges of NZ$76 ($46) per 1,000km, a fee in line with equivalent diesel-powered vehicles. Plug-in hybrid owners must pay NZ$38 per 1,000km, a lower charge because they already pay tax on fuel.

“This transition to road user charges is about fairness and equity. It will ensure that all road users are contributing to the upkeep and maintenance of our roads, irrespective of the type of vehicle they choose to drive,” said Simeon Brown, New Zealand’s transport minister, when justifying the policy change.

The charges were slammed by EV lobby groups and green campaigners, which have warned they will slow uptake of non-polluting vehicles and result in plug-in hybrid EV drivers paying more than those driving standard cars.

Israel tax authorities are proposing a similar travel usage charge for EVs, which is intended to come into force in 2026 to tackle congestion and the budget deficit, which has soared due to the war with Hamas.

But many governments facing a similar drain on fuel tax revenues, such as the UK and Ireland, have so far baulked at introducing unpopular mileage-based road user charges for EVs. Instead, they have begun to phase out or reduce tax breaks for EV drivers to bolster tax collection.

[simon gordon] 06/5/2024 18:39

One explanation for Musk's desire for a $56bn pay award:

Big Think - 5/4/24

Why the ultra rich get rich, explained in two charts | Brian Klaas

[simon gordon] 05/5/2024 21:19

cfb2,

Still early days for that at the FT.

The intellectual humility of the tech-gods is one interesting aspect of their being. SBF would have cut a better deal if he had come down to earth like Zhao.

[cfb2] 05/5/2024 19:11

Simon: To summarise the article...everyone has good and bad traits and which are which is dependent on the perspective of the person making the judgement.

Does the FT get written by chatgpt these days?

[simon gordon] 05/5/2024 09:31

FT - 4/5/24:

...Holding the world’s richest and most powerful people to account is of crucial importance, and I, like these journalists, remain committed to calling out Musk’s many wrongdoings.

I also recognise the impulse to consign him to a good or bad bucket — I veer towards the former when I see him posing in an endearingly awkward manner on a red carpet or speaking passionately about his projects and towards the latter every time I see him post yet another offensive comment on X. But such virtue-cataloguing is misguided and dangerous.

None of us are so straightforwardly “terrible̶1; as Musk’s critics would have him; nor are we as heroic as his fans think he is. And the funny thing is that by creating a taxonomy of heroes and villains, we are in fact tied up in the same moral framework as Musk himself.

In this framework, the means — whether they involve deeming someone beyond redemption because their politics and behaviour are so obviously wrong that they need to be cast out, or treating your employees as utterly disposable cogs in a machine — are always justified by the self-evident moral righteousness of the ends.

It came as no surprise when Musk revealed his fondness of the neo-utilitarian movement known as effective altruism, infamously popularised by the now jailed crypto founder Sam Bankman-Fried. This is a philosophy that posits that you should do “the most you can do” and emphasises the importance of where your actions get to, rather than what those actions actually are. Virtue and character do not count; consequences are all that matter.

With this worldview in mind, one can see why Musk, like many other Silicon Valley executives, regards his living, breathing, human employees as mere “headcountR21; and the loss of their livelihoods as simply “cost reduction”. His grand cause — the various ways he believes he is saving humanity — is so obviously more important than any one worker (or even 14,000 of them), that pretty much any treatment of them is justifiable.

But working out what is wrong and what is right is not as easy as putting some numbers into a spreadsheet and seeing what it spits out. It requires real moral debate about which values we consider most important.

“We have all these deep moral questions, but there’s really an absence of proper moral debate,” says Edward Brooks, director of the Oxford Character Project, of the current state of much of our public discourse. “It’s just a shouting match between ‘this is so obviously wrong’ on one side and ‘it’s so obviously right’ on the other.”

I once wrote that the world does not need more Elon Musks. I feel less confident about that argument than I used to — we do need more risk-takers and innovators and people who are willing to push boundaries. Given his flaws, maybe one Elon is enough. But what all of us certainly could do with more of is some nuance in the way we view and judge the actions of other people.

[hosede] 02/5/2024 23:00

will there be figures issued for April sales? I can't find any yet, but I would have thought someone would have reported them

[simon gordon] 01/5/2024 14:35

FT - 1/5/24:

Why Xi Jinping is afraid to unleash China’s consumers

The pressure on Beijing to find a new growth model is acute but the president seems resistant to deeper economic reform

[hosede] 01/5/2024 13:35

Agreed - but China are concerned with their own problems not those of the US, and
Powell has his long term reputation to consider: I think he'll remember his Simon and Garfunkel "Id rather be a Volcker than a Burns".
Incidentally I get a quarterly email update from the Copernicus institute - I can recommend it

[cfb2] 01/5/2024 13:10

A devaluation of the Yuan will mean their exports become even more problematic for the US. Powell needs to keep interest rates high to unwind all the money printing they did, which is the source of their inflation. My gold stocks are doing well at the moment, which is another way of saying Powell is between a rock and a hard place.

Tesla up a bit, down a bit. My pricing model for Tesla shows me where they'll likely be in five years or a decade from now. I'm not smart or lucky enough to make money from short term swings. If you can do it reliably, well done you!

[hosede] 01/5/2024 10:29

A devaluation of the Yuan is on the cards - according to those who have an understanding. Meanwhile Tesla's rush up to the 190s seems to be steadily reversing - along with the US market in general.
yesterdays Investor's confidence and other figures came in a mile below expectations.
As expected Powell is between a rock and a hard place

[simon gordon] 01/5/2024 06:32

Michael Petitis in the FT yesterday was writing about China's problem of excess savings:

China’s problem is excess savings, not too much capacity

Policymakers on either side of bitter trade dispute seem to confuse two issues

...The fact that China dominates certain manufacturing sectors is perfectly consistent with free trade and comparative advantage. It is excess savings that creates a problem for the global economy — and it should be noted that many countries besides China engage in similar behaviour, including Germany and Japan. The problem is that these excess savings represent the suppression of domestic wages, and thus domestic demand, to achieve global competitiveness...

[johnwise] 01/5/2024 04:52

The phrase there's one, or a sucker, born every minute expresses dismay at the gullibility of people..


The used electric car timebomb - older EVs could be hard to sell because batteries aren't guaranteed

[cfb2] 01/5/2024 00:03

blusteradjuster: I struggle to understand what is going on with China's economy.
I agree their growth is slowing. They quote over 5% growth on GDP but nobody believes them. They seem to have been on the brink of collapse for the last couple of years.

From the outside it looks like their housing bubble is collapsing, leaving a percentage of their population paying mortgages on houses that don't exist. Obviously Evergrande is in liquidation but it seems like a number of others are going to follow.

At the same time China's manufacturing appears to be going flat out to benefit from economies of scale. What happens when countries put up tariffs to stop the flood of goods being exported?

Their multi-decade plan of investing in their "belt and road" has various countries defaulting on debts.

Little of this precarious situation is reflected in their stock market.

[johnwise] 30/4/2024 22:49

VIDEO

Jacob Rees-Mogg SLAMS climate change campaigner for 'not doing their homework' in AWKWARD exchange

[blusteradjuster] 30/4/2024 17:50

China’s growth is slowing, its population is declining, its GDP-carbon-intensity is declining, its renewables fit-out is accelerating.

The trends are obviously positive.

[hosede] 30/4/2024 17:48

And we'll probably all be going round in rickshaws too!

[hosede] 30/4/2024 14:18

cfb
I jus tlooked it up on Google so could be out of date. Even 54% is huge and makes the things that we do in the UK irrelevant.
Also watched Sunday's "Countryfile" last night. With the wettest winter (maybe ever) Britain's fields are waterlogged, crop planting can't begin, so ths years harvest will be VERY poor. Food prices certain to rise substantially.
That extra 7% moisture caused by a 1 degree temperature rise is already proving very significant.