I'm rooting for Tesla Motors. I'm also rooting for that kid on the street corner selling lemonade. Especially if it's $56,000 to $200,000 a glass because it comes from organically grown, Michigan lemons of a strain the kid spent the past 6 years developing to grow in a temperate climate.
That's some frickin' amazing lemonade.
I want Tesla Motors to grow and survive and prosper and create numerous, well paying jobs that keep Americans in the manner in which we demand to be kept. And I'm willing to front some taxpayer money to help it in its rise...but I reject the subtext that Tesla should get money In Lieu Of General Motors, or that it should get Some Money Slated For General Motors as suggested by ourfriend and fellow Kossack
Why don't we take a huge chunk of those BILLIONS we are throwing at GM et. al. and throw them to a company which is at the forefront of design and technology which could wean us away from foreign oil, and move us in the Green direction?
As many suggest, it's not an either-or situation.
Let's keep Tesla Motors in perspective.
To date Tesla has sold 140 Roadsters according to this January 9th article from Huffington Post.
140.
Chrysler, one of the companies so many claim can't sell cars because "nobody is buying them" sold 100,000 vehicles LAST MONTH.
Chrysler: 100,000 cars in March.
Tesla: 140 Roadsters (but let's be generous here and include the 850 or so back orders they have).
If 100,000 vehicles in a month rates "nobody wants them" I don't even know what 140 vehicles rates. The "nobody wants them" argument is simply stupid anyway, so...moving along.
Between GM or Chyrlser and Tesla we're talking about several orders of magnitude (adding a zero on the end of) difference in size. We're also talking about several orders of magnitude in numbers of jobs...
...Tesla Motors should not receive a DIME of money slated for the domestic auto industry. That is a ridiculous suggestion.
Some day, Tesla Motors may be a big player and may be a keystone in American manufacturing, but that day isn't today.
Even big automakers struggle to make money on cars that sell 20,000 units a year, and so far Tesla has sold 140 Roadsters.
It's important to remember that all manufacturing is connected. Toyota and GM and even Tesla use many of the same companies to create parts. There's a factory just down the road from me, CWC Textron that makes camshafts for Honda, Ford, Toyota and GM. These major companies by sheer quantity uphold the general infrastructure Telsa itself needs in order to create parts.
As I've mentioned before, Toyota very much wants GM to survive, because a GM collapse would cause a huge disruption in their ability to get parts. Tesla would have that an even worse time of it, as would all other American, ans possibly global manufacturing.
Right now, Tesla is a small kettle lake, not an ocean. It doesn't create its own weather patterns yet in every aspect of manufacturing from cars to cookies like the current, large Automotive players. Few people particularly LIKE that we have companies with so much influence and impact on every crevasse of our lives, no matter where you live in the United States. But that's the world we live in. That's the world we inherited. That's partly the world we're trying to change. And maybe Tesla can help be a part of that change.
But we need to be realistic. Tesla is only what we WISH were true. It's not yet true in terms of impact on American jobs. And I'm in favor of investing American money into it. But it shouldn't get a dime of money slated for GM or Chrysler. Not a dime.