I guess if you don’t count maintenance as a constraint. All those CV boots, hubs etc to go wrong seems like it’d be a drain on labor.

I mean how many Paris Dakkar trucks or King of Hammers rigs have fully independent suspension?

You can throw some contractors at that problem though.

I always wondered why the humvee had independent suspension. Was it really that big of an advantage to offset load carrying capability, durability and travel?

I guess since they’re sticking with it it must be.

I bet 10 kids immediately began camping the airdrop, waiting for someone to rush in and collect the gear.

Video games are ruining our yoof.

The ev market is competitive because there’s a level playing field. Once you have only a few companies eligable for credits they’ll have a significant competitive advantage. Maybe they’ll move more volume, maybe they’ll make higher margin but they will make a lot more money than their competitors who are out of…

1) if the car is leased, yes they do take the credit. that’s why if you don’t have enough qualifying encome to use the whole non refundable credit it’s advisable to lease the car instead.

2) In this hypothetical their buyers would be able to take advantage of a tax credit that others coudln’t. In that scenario, don’t…

If the main barrier was capitol costs I could see this “everybody gets some” approach. e.g. they need 4Bn in loan guarantees to build out charging networks etc.

but the main issue is economy of scale to drive prices down, so earmarking for each company doesn’t make sense. All it means is the incentive is to enter as…

Their big competition isn’t other EVs, its gasoline cars.

And at this point the programs been around for 8 years. If other companies were going to enter and were dependent on the credit they should’ve done it by now. It almost went away abruptly in December during the tax debate. If they’re planning on still having it…

That’s why I say, pool what’s left. That’ll get burned through rater quickly over the next few years anyway, but it’ll give the laggards a bit more of a push to actually release product in stead of press releases.

No one wants to do this though because probably 1/2 of what’s left would go to Tesla in 2019 with the…

If they’d put a time limit on it I’d be more sympathetic to this.

What’s the point of giving Ford a 7.5k credit to build EVs in 2025 when everyone else burned through their credits years ago, and it’s already cheaper to buiild EVs? They’re just going to pocket the difference with their competition, maybe return it to…

The problem is we’re not at parity yet. And fossil fuel does receive a lot of explicit and implicit subsidy. I would gladly trade the EV credit for a carbon tax, tougher regulations on particulate emissions and removal of Oil & Gas’ exemption from the clean water act.

You’d probably still get there but the market…

EVs are going to hit cost parity in 5-8 years anyway. Not to mention EV mandates in China and other fast growing markets.


If they can’t be bothered to make EVs without a 10k price advantage over their competition perhaps they should start getting advice from Kodak on what their future options are.

They can still qualify for credits from the pool like everyone else.

We create whole monopolies for innovators through patents so I’m not too concerned about the companies already making EVs having first mover advantage because they’ve already released products and built up the market.

I’ll quote the article since I can’t say it better.

“

They should pool the remaining tax credits. Companies who’ve been sitting on their hands up until now don’t deserve a competitive advantage for waiting for others to drive down battery costs

Yes but the bodyshell and powertrain are basically standard issue. Those are the expensive bits to engineer. Adding buttons or removing parts is pretty inexpensive from a development standpoint vs. building something from the ground up.

Also Ford knows they’re going to sell these things as Police Cars so I’m sure they…

The average LLV drives 18 miles a day, does 500 stop-starts and gets 9 mpg?!! if they don’t go electric on these things they really are as dumb as we think they are

depends on what they’re paying for maintenance, fuel and lost time due to traffic accidents. Operating a fleet built on 1980s GM tech can’t be cheap.

Considering what I’ve heard about fires and handling issues due to mixing and matching front and rear S-10 axles I’m not sure it’s a great example. They managed to keep them on the road I guess, but considering the age of these things they’re very likely paying a price of increased injuries in crashes, which are…

To put it in persepective, it’s a 180k vehicles over many years. Yes it’s a big number for 1 fleet but in terms of a production run it’s pretty small. I bet more Bolts will be built in that time period.

And in 10 years you’re stuck with an obsolete design unless you go through all the NREs again.

I’d rather see them…

Exactly, but they start with a production vehicle.

Carbon motors tried building purpose built Police Cars in the same way the USPS wants to do but failed.

The closest example I can think of is the crown vic but that was a production car before it became basically a dedicated police and livery platform.