More EVs and more charging stations is certainly a good thing for Tesla. Assuming the industry settles on an open standard for charging as opposed to each car maker having their own standard and their own chargers. Will probably happen but you never know for sure. VHS and Beta battled it out for quite a while.

And I'm not so with you on that analogy. A Beta player is worthless if nobody releases movies on it. Outside of charging stations, Tesla isn't as dependent on third parties to make Teslas a success.

But I have read that in large parts of the US, potential customers are steered away from EV vehicles. Even when it is their own company's vehicles (Toyota/Leaf for example). Having more EVs could change that.
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Sure, it is easy for a company to make wild claims about what the company is going to be doing 8 years in the future. Musk has come up a wee bit short of some of his grandiose claims too.

VW paid lip service back in 2010 but they were too busy making fistfuls of cash selling diesels and didn't put real money into EVs. Their diesel market has since imploded. China and some major European countries are pushing electric vehicles as a way to combat urban smog and other urban air pollution issues. This time around, VW is backing up their talk with billions in investment.

I don't see any reason to doubt that VW will be a major producer of electric cars in 8~10 years time.

The Tesla doubters may be proved wrong, but I think they have a pretty strong case.
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This will be a big advantage once battery supply becomes constrained. Being able to control cell production is huge.
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He's still doing more for U.S. energy change than most. He's pushing the technology forward more than our entire worthless ass government.
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You believe it’s government’s role to innovate and act as entrepreneur?
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The hype around Tesla annoyed me. I appreciated Musk as a visionary but never really took Tesla seriously.

My wife had an important birthday. She wanted an SUV. Had some ideas that I easily picked apart. She then mentioned Tesla in the same way that she had Bitcoin as a Christmas gift at the highs months before. I sighed heavily and went along for a test drive.

Loved the Model X experience. Loved the technology. Loved how it felt different.

We took delivery two weeks ago. Could not be more pleased or impressed. (The wife likes it!/end thread.) Not sure about the sustainability of it as a business model and not quite ready to provide Tesla with a multi-year 0% loan in the form of a Roadster deposit, but I’m beyond intrigued.

I think Tesla is pretty cool and that’s probably pretty representative.
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The ID products are pretty cool. I could see them selling a lot of those.
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I can't imagine they'd use different standards. Tesla open sourced their battery patent. They want competition. They'd be nuts not to. They know their biggest hurdle right now is adoption.

For sure potential customers are being steered away from EVs. Big oil has lobbied for years against it. Big auto set up skunk work operations for years because they know EVs are cheaper to service. There will be more EVs on the road, because of Uber/Lyft, public transportation (eBuses, etc.), and eventually driverless. As more EVs hit the road, you'll see batteries innovate rapidly.
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I guess I'm the opposite.

I don't see what Musk has done that is so visionary. He is a charismatic salesman and I'm sure he is smart and a hard worker. Reminds me of Steve Jobs for getting credit for a bunch of products and ideas that a bunch of other people had already tried.

Putting satellites into orbit dates to the 60's. London had electric buses in 1907 (that is not a typo). Colonies on Mars and hyper loops is a bunch of BS he does to get media attention (and aren't original ideas anyway). People have been digging tunnels underground for hundreds of years. I don't know much about his time at PayPal but an online payment service seems rather obvious. Kudos to him for starting the right business at the right time.

On the other hand, starting a car company is hard. The US hasn't had a new, successful car company in something like 80 years.

He made electric cars sexy the same way that Jobs made music players and smart phones sexy. He appears to have the same type of fanatical following that Apple has. Credit for a well-engineered product and a fabulous job of branding.

I hope Tesla succeeds. I think the odds of it succeeding as an independent company are probably less than 50-50.
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The $7,500 tax credit that buyers of Tesla cars get surely helped a bit.
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I don't know that visionary needs to mean that the core of the idea is their own. He is pushing these ideas, where in some of the categories, nobody else was. These are all things that would likely happen at some point anyway, but pushing the world to see the events happen now or as soon as possible counts for something in my book.

The United States wasn't visionary and groundbreaking because they invented democracy. It was forcing it upon the world and making it work that cemented it's(our) legacy.
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When private markets fail to even try? Yeah.
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Elon must be getting tired of answering to public investors.

Am considering taking Tesla private at $420. Funding secured.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 7, 2018

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Not that anyone would turn it down, but how big of a difference would this credit really make when you can't lease the thing, and the purchase price is north of $80k?

Big part of the reason why I think this credit is stupid.
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Yeah, the credit probably had a more meaningful impact on sales of other EVs like the Nissan Leaf (the one I bought) and Chevy Bolt. With a price tag around $35k, that $7,500 is pretty significant. At a price point of $50k+, it makes less of a difference.
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