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Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html

sounds like a success story to me. s/
It worries me that this could dry up and he could be forced to sell. He tried to sell to google but the deal fell.
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Makes me wonder why.
 
It worries me that this could dry up and he could be forced to sell. He tried to sell to google but the deal fell.
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Makes me wonder why.
Finally! somebody gets the myth of Elon Musk. Once the government stops giving him money he's in charge of a company that has never made a profit.
 
Finally! somebody gets the myth of Elon Musk. Once the government stops giving him money he's in charge of a company that has never made a profit.
I still think he should have started with an affordable car rather than what he did. Killing off the base car was a mistake. I hope the 3 sells, he needs it to.
 
I still think he should have started with an affordable car rather than what he did. Killing off the base car was a mistake. I hope the 3 sells, he needs it to.
OK devils advocate here, what if he's bitten more off than he can chew, what if electric cars are never going to be affordable?
 
My son-in-law's father is an engineer at a defense contractor in Cali, and he told me this.

"We get custom tools made for us in China. At first, we would send them the drawings and then send an engineer there to help them get it right. After a while they told us, don't bother sending engineers, just send us the specs. Eventually, they said, 'why don't you just use our designs?'."

That's what's happening in China. It won't be long until most things coming out of China are more advanced and better designed than things coming out of the US, even when the US things are made in China.

This is interesting because I was recently speaking to a friend who works at Google about AI and quantum computing. What was fascinating was that he told me that some of the research papers the folks at google read are authored by people in China and they have really advanced material. And it actually concerns them given that the advancements made by the Chinese could be misused by the government.
 
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Finally! somebody gets the myth of Elon Musk. Once the government stops giving him money he's in charge of a company that has never made a profit.

Even more significantly, the federal tax credit applies to only a finite number of cars per manufacturer. Tesla is closer to exhausting their credits pool than their competitors. So naturally Musk is in favor of abolishing the credits, rather than allowing them to run their designed course.
 
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It seems to me that despite the isolationism crud being shouted around day after day, we are in a global economy. It is in Apple's (and the consumers) best interest to work with a reputable company which understands that the bottom line shouldn’t be the only objective in business but research and development will drive more and larger profits. So what if they are working with a Chinese company. I doubt Tesla would even be interested in any kind of partnership with Apple because Tesla has a intelligent but sometimes egotistic owner who wants to go it alone. Both Tesla and Apple are models of a visionary companies which old school economists don't understand. Unfortunately many businesses in the USA just value the bottom line. Few USA companies do enough research and development. Putting out a product just to put out a product often leads to disappointed consumers. The amount of money which Apple spends annually on product development both here and abroad is incredible. Apple knows and understands that they will make a ton of money (profit) by producing the best designed product rather than rushing to be the first to market often resulting in poorly designed products. Read the commentary published by the so called and old school economic pundits to realize they don't get it. Apple gets it. Apple got it. Apple always and gotten it. As a result, Apple has incredible customer loyalty which results in Apple being the most profitable company in the history of the world.
 
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15 minutes isn't bad to wait at the charging station. However, what I worry about is when there are more EVs on the road and charging stations become overwhelmed. You can usually gas up in a few minutes, but these take several times that and you don't even get full range in 15 minutes. I'm already used to waiting in line at gas stations.
Overnight trickle charging means that vast majority of users will be regularly charging at home and only sporadically at a charging station.
 
Even more significantly, the federal tax credit applies to only a finite number of cars per manufacturer. Tesla is closer to exhausting their credits pool than their competitors. So naturally Musk is in favor of abolishing the credits, rather than allowing them to run their designed course.
Are you saying that this is dirty pool? Perhaps to take down Fiskers comeback?
 
I think Apple will chicken out of an personal "apple car" and just buy a Chinese Uber like business and make the fleet electric in Asia. Apple do things by halves these days.
 
Look forward and wake up. Man.

All knowledge is about copying. Learning means not far from it. Copying and creation are intuitive. When you have a critical mission command to your men, you say " do you copy", you won't say " do you learn?". Your best students or solders should reply "copy that".

Let me ask you a question: When and how did you learn your mother tongue? Did you create one? or you copied? When in high school learning Newton's laws, Einstein's or quantum physics, did you create by yourself? or just learnt (copied) from textbook or taking notes from your teacher?

China is already a high tech super power. No doubt about it. China is already being the biggest market for electric cars that all car companies know it. There will be first flying Taxi operating in Dubai this year. That's a Chinese company and totally designed by themselves.

Western people is far from understanding China. It has 25 times longer history than US. Spending some time to learn from this country just like Chinese, Korean, Japanese learn from western country in the past century. It's hard to change some one's mind. But it's good for those that only think US is the best. All tudent's of those Asian countries have learnt 10 years of English as required credit when they graduate from college. How much portion of US students learned that much of hours of Chinese language?

Or perhaps Google translation can help you..

Why do you think universities have honor codes if copying is considered "learning"?
I learned my mother tongue by people teaching free materials as well as experiences that cannot be brought by money. Did your parents/school spend hundreds of billions to research and develop your mother tongue? Are Newton's laws and Einstein's law patented or highly classified? Learning definitely involves copying but the ability of replication doesn't mean anything.
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My son-in-law's father is an engineer at a defense contractor in Cali, and he told me this.

"We get custom tools made for us in China. At first, we would send them the drawings and then send an engineer there to help them get it right. After a while they told us, don't bother sending engineers, just send us the specs. Eventually, they said, 'why don't you just use our designs?'."

That's what's happening in China. It won't be long until most things coming out of China are more advanced and better designed than things coming out of the US, even when the US things are made in China.

Good example illustrating how China got to where it is today. They lure in foreign tech buy offering super low price (cheap labour, non-existence environmental regulation), they steal your design and then reject your engineer (someone just lost his job). They ask for more designs in order to perfect their replica. Finally they are able to produce exactly what you designed at a fraction of the cost compared to producing in the U.S.. Did they actually spend the time and money to develop their own stuff? Who cares since they are cheap.
 
The only problem that I see with this is that some states don't allow their cars to be sold through the manufactuer, but strictly by dealerships. This is the problem Tesla is facing in Texas.... and we know that Apple would much rather sell a product through their own channels then through some "Apple Authorized Reseller".
 
My son-in-law's father is an engineer at a defense contractor in Cali, and he told me this.

"We get custom tools made for us in China. At first, we would send them the drawings and then send an engineer there to help them get it right. After a while they told us, don't bother sending engineers, just send us the specs. Eventually, they said, 'why don't you just use our designs?'."

That's what's happening in China. It won't be long until most things coming out of China are more advanced and better designed than things coming out of the US, even when the US things are made in China.
It makes me sick to hear and all of this coming from the evil fools in the west that allowed this to happen from a nation that was dead walking just a few decades ago, begging us to help them.
 
Lightning cables for charging any electric car with a battery made by Apple? Must keep that ecosystem in the green (double meaning).
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Elon Musk's growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html

sounds like a success story to me. s/

Apple has over $250 billion-w/-a-b in their (tax-free offshore) coffers. I could still see them partnering w/ someone & *still* begging for government subsidies.
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What a joke! Telsa is loosing money..... besides Honda & Toyota are way ahead in this area. Hydrogen Fuel-Cells by 2020.

Safety issues & charging stations? That said, PBS' Motorweek echoed the same thing about Hydrogen, w/ the current 2 issues in my first sentence.
 
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Are you saying that this is dirty pool? Perhaps to take down Fiskers comeback?

I assume you make the little joke about the comeback for Fiskers.

Elon Musk is very good at making what is good for him sound like it's good for everybody. I never bought his patter, especially when I know better. He's always angling for advantage. No more no less here.
 
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