You don’t work in academia do you?

There is never a line at the charging station in my garage.

RIP Nicky Hayden.

I work as an engineer and an automaker. There is a LOT work that needs to be done before the public even starts seeing the hacked together mules.

The press release I read says Ford selected SK as the Lightening battery supplier in 2018. SK has an existing factory in Georgia and is building another factory that is scheduled to start production in 2023.

It takes about 5 years to design, test, and tool a new vehicle for production.   That means the Ford F-150 Lightening was kicked off in 2017 - well before the Cypertruck was revealed.

Ford announced a joint venture with SK today for 60 GWh of batteries a year to be built at 2 North American battery factories.    Those are in addition to SK’s factory in Georgia.

$28,000 - $4500 tax credit = $23,500.    

The biggest range reduction in cold temperatures comes from heating the cabin. If this truck has a resistance heater it can really drain the battery. (Heating could be up to 30% of my power consumption in my Chevy Spark EV). If the F-150 lightening uses a heat pump the power draw is MUCH less.

Selling cars at a loss isn’t “eating everyone’s lunch”.   Battery prices have only recently dropped enough for companies to make money selling EVs.

1. Heavy duty trucks do pay an annual tax based on their weight. Is called the Heavy Vehicle Use Tax.

In the summer of 2016 GM wanted to get rid of the Spark EV to make room for the Bolts so they were giving out screaming good deals. Come fall 2019 the cheapest EV leases I could find were about $250 a month and that is about what I like to pay all-in for a car (Purchase, fuel, maintenance, and insurance).

If that was the plan wouldn’t make sense for the Feds to give the manufacturer a $7500 tax credit for every car sold.   Why make the buyer the middle man?

That usually comes from a 1979 study by the GAO titled Excessive Truck Weight: An Expensive Burden We Can No Longer Support.

Commercial vehicles are already taxed based on weight. There is also a 12% federal sales tax on vehicle 26K lbs and heavier.

All light vehicles combined are a rounding error when it comes to road damage. More than 90% of weight related road damage comes from Class 6-8 commercial vehicles.

I suspect it would be managed the same way as cash for clunkers was. That was a point of sale rebate too.

Yes, it is very backwards that the more a family makes the more the federal government will give them to buy a car. That is completely backwards.

You can catch some amazing lease deals sometimes but that requires the financial resources to be able to wait for a deal. Most low income people buy a car when they need a car. The car broke, it is too much to fix, so now I need another car to get to work. They also can’t lease a car and then hope that when the lease…

They only sold it for $40k so Musk could say Tesla delivered the Model Y at the advertised launch price.   I expect the same with the Cybertruck.  Good luck to anyone that expects to buy a base model at the advertised price.