Tesla Truck

[txdpd]

Vehicle mile taxes are the trucking lobbies scheme to move the tax burden from trucking companies to car drivers. In the US, Commercial vehicles represent about 10% of miles driven and 25% of fuel consumed. With inevitable increase of taxes to meet budgeting short falls, they’ll hopefully get a smaller piece of the pie with a mileage tax, hence the opposition to miles driven to axle weight tax. Consumers are paying for it either way.

Personally I’m a fan of pay at the pump, because a mileage tax will have a huge administrative cost attached to it. I don’t see the government handling miles driven per year any more efficiently than dollars of income per year.

Electric cars are less than .75% of vehicles on the road, locally they may have a greater concentration, vehicle mile taxes to tax electric cars will cost us all a lot more.

[JAD]

Which goes to fund R&D for SpaceX

Qft. Musk’s long game is Mars.

[Hambo]

If you don't like Musk's truck, you can pre-order a vaporware electric truck from Lordstown: https://lordstownmotors.com/

[HeavyDuty]

I still think the future looks more like a Chevy Volt than a Tesla. Batteries with a fuel cell backup, you can use pure batteries around town but also drive unlimited miles so long as you keep the fuel cell topped off on the way.

[Borderland]

Vehicle mile taxes are the trucking lobbies scheme to move the tax burden from trucking companies to car drivers. In the US, Commercial vehicles represent about 10% of miles driven and 25% of fuel consumed. With inevitable increase of taxes to meet budgeting short falls, they’ll hopefully get a smaller piece of the pie with a mileage tax, hence the opposition to miles driven to axle weight tax. Consumers are paying for it either way.

Personally I’m a fan of pay at the pump, because a mileage tax will have a huge administrative cost attached to it. I don’t see the government handling miles driven per year any more efficiently than dollars of income per year.

Electric cars are less than .75% of vehicles on the road, locally they may have a greater concentration, vehicle mile taxes to tax electric cars will cost us all a lot more.

Roger that. People who live in areas where they have to drive long distances for work, to school or to the store are going to get hit hard with tax-by-the-mile. I won't because I don't drive that much anymore but I'm the exception. I think the some states will try to determine how many miles you actually drive by including a self report on your state income tax but not everyone is going to play that game. They will probably catch you when you sell a vehicle and the purchaser reports the mileage to license the vehicle. Then whamo, you get a nice big tax bill from the state. Just more gov't regulation and more adm staff to squeeze the money out of taxpayers. I see a huge gov't boondoggle there. I don't think the fed tax on fuel will ever be lowered either. People who have electric vehicles will pay more to drive than people who don't. Just consider that your contribution to cleaner air.

[mmc45414]

Currently Panasonic is the battery supplier, but there's also several Tesla battery plants under development to get rid of that weak point.

More Panasonic makes components for the batteries Tesla makes. Panasonic manufacturers the battery cells (and does joint R&D), which Tesla purchases and then uses to make the batteries at Gigafactory 1. IIRC it's the same for his home energy projects, power wall.

It is my understanding that Panasonic makes the 18650 cells and about 7200 of them get built into the battery pack for a Model S. I doubt a company like Panasonic would have made an exclusive agreement, and if somebody like Ford or VW or any number of others said they want a few trillion 18650 cells they could get in the game pretty quick.

As a matter of fact the use of electric vehicles is being discouraged around here because soon we will be taxed on miles driven and not actual fuel consumption. That's really pissing a lot of people off because one of the reasons to buy an electric vehicle is to avoid buying gasoline and paying the tax placed on the fuel.

Personally I’m a fan of pay at the pump, because a mileage tax will have a huge administrative cost attached to it. I don’t see the government handling miles driven per year any more efficiently than dollars of income per year.

I think the some states will try to determine how many miles you actually drive by including a self report on your state income tax but not everyone is going to play that game.

I have to go to Chicago often enough that I have the toll road I-Pass in my car and I see an automated system like that. There will just be an unavoidable set of monitoring points, like truck weigh stations, that grab the info as you drive by. Because it never was a "fuel" tax, it was a "road" tax that was just easily collected by tacking it onto the universally required fuels. Nobody should feel entitled to evading that tax if they are using the roads, but people think oil companies that make 3% are screwing them when they buy a gallon of gas that has 15%-20% tax imbedded in it.

As far as SpaceX goes, they're the only private company that can launch to the ISS, has the largest developed man-rated module, has done things previously never thought possible with space launches, and is the only private company to have DoD contracts for payloads.

What a phenomenal accomplishment for private industry to pull something like that off.

I know the tone of what I am saying sounds like I have a negative view of the whole thing, and I really don't, though I am probably put off by the hero worship that Musk seems to cultivate. He seems to want people to believe that no probable is insurmountable, just because he really is that damn smart. But right now he enjoys the advantage of government incentives, no significant competition, and the prestige of being a low volume luxury brand. Much seems to be being made of the 200k deposits, but that is a sliver of the market. He probably needs 25k-50k a month, every month, before he becomes a concern. And ohbytheway, he actually needs to ship them. And if that starts to happen I would predict that he will not be left alone in the market very long. Compared to an IC engine an electric motor is straight forward. The two cam chains in my F-150 probably represent more moving parts than in an entire Tesla vehicle. The fact that motors are small and power can be expanded by adding multiples that can be torque vectored as needed is just an awesome performance advantage. All the space that was for transmissions and exhaust systems and other things that go away filled in with battery cells. Weight and balance can be manipulated with battery placement.

Much has been made of the charger network and the negativity associated with the typical dealer network, but companies like Ford and VW can force an unfunded mandate for all of their dealers to install charging stations at their stores. No leases to be negotiated and the capital expenditure can be forced onto the dealers. If you want to sell our electric cars hang chargers on your store. But the dealers can benefit from a steady stream of customers constantly visiting their stores.

And while it would not be a fit for me, I realized today that it would be a perfect fit for my mom. She is 81 and has a Mini Cooper S that is 14 years old and, probably because it is driven by a little old lady, is starting to not shift right. Lately she has been driving about 3k a year, something WITHOUT a transmission might be nice.

But if all this takes off I think we are back to relying on imports for the minerals that are necessary to build eighteen trillion battery cells (250k vehicles, 7200 per. Did I do that right?...), but at least hydraulic fracking is freeing up a lotta natural gas that can generate the power.

[txdpd]

IMO electric cars are rich kid toys and manufacturers just add the government rebates to the price people are willing to pay. I think electric car users should pay their “fair share” for road use. A vehicle mile tax though isn’t the answer. That’s cutting off our noses to spite our faces. A 5500lb Tesla at 2750lb per axle shouldn’t get taxed at the same rate as an 80,000lb Semi truck at 16,000lb per axle. That’s the vehicle mile tax argument, all vehicles are created equal, we’ll flat tax per mile and the electric car users will pay their fair share. I hope people see that bullshit for what it is, straight up corporate welfare. Commercial vehicles pay about 40% of the fuel tax, if they get a flat rate per mile and drive 10% of the miles, who’s picking up the slack? It won’t be the less than 1% of electric cars on the road.

It’s not fair that electric cars don’t pay a fuel tax, we’ll tax by the mile.
It’s not fair that I’m putting a fraction of the weight per axle on the road of a semi and getting taxed at the same rate. We’ll tax per pound per axle.
It’s not fair that the semi truck is getting taxed at 16,000 per axle when he’s LTL or empty. So we’ll add administrators and bureaucrats to the mix to figure out variable rates and audit. (That could also apply to pickups and SUVs with empty and higher gross weight)
And we’ll end up where we are now with heavier vehicles that put most of the wear on the road, paying the most taxes, plus 20% in admin cost.

I think it’d be far better to tax tires by load rating than vehicles by the mile. The fuel tax isn’t perfect, but already covers miles driven and vehicle weight. Something will have to be done about electric cars, but I hope it’s actually about electric cars.

[AKDoug]

IMO electric cars are rich kid toys and manufacturers just add the government rebates to the price people are willing to pay. I think electric car users should pay their “fair share” for road use. A vehicle mile tax though isn’t the answer. That’s cutting off our noses to spite our faces. A 5500lb Tesla at 2750lb per axle shouldn’t get taxed at the same rate as an 80,000lb Semi truck at 16,000lb per axle. That’s the vehicle mile tax argument, all vehicles are created equal, we’ll flat tax per mile and the electric car users will pay their fair share. I hope people see that bullshit for what it is, straight up corporate welfare. Commercial vehicles pay about 40% of the fuel tax, if they get a flat rate per mile and drive 10% of the miles, who’s picking up the slack? It won’t be the less than 1% of electric cars on the road.

It’s not fair that electric cars don’t pay a fuel tax, we’ll tax by the mile.
It’s not fair that I’m putting a fraction of the weight per axle on the road of a semi and getting taxed at the same rate. We’ll tax per pound per axle.
It’s not fair that the semi truck is getting taxed at 16,000 per axle when he’s LTL or empty. So we’ll add administrators and bureaucrats to the mix to figure out variable rates and audit. (That could also apply to pickups and SUVs with empty and higher gross weight)
And we’ll end up where we are now with heavier vehicles that put most of the wear on the road, paying the most taxes, plus 20% in admin cost.

I think it’d be far better to tax tires by load rating than vehicles by the mile. The fuel tax isn’t perfect, but already covers miles driven and vehicle weight. Something will have to be done about electric cars, but I hope it’s actually about electric cars.

Commercial vehicle taxes are just passed on to the consumers anyway. Everything moves by trucks at some point, so increasing taxes on them will just end up taxing every consumer.

My semi's average 64,000# when they are moving.. or about 3556# per tire. My pickup averages 8000# or about 2000# per tire. The semi gets 4.7 mpg, the pickup gets 12.0 mpg. The semi pays 2.55 more fuel tax per mile than the pickup, but only puts 1.77 times the load on the road. The semi has to pay federal heavy use tax and a higher registration fee as well. In my state, studded tires on personal vehicles do astronomically more damage than a semi does.

[txdpd]

Commercial vehicle taxes are just passed on to the consumers anyway. Everything moves by trucks at some point, so increasing taxes on them will just end up taxing every consumer.

My semi's average 64,000# when they are moving.. or about 3556# per tire. My pickup averages 8000# or about 2000# per tire. The semi gets 4.7 mpg, the pickup gets 12.0 mpg. The semi pays 2.55 more fuel tax per mile than the pickup, but only puts 1.77 times the load on the road. The semi has to pay federal heavy use tax and a higher registration fee as well. In my state, studded tires on personal vehicles do astronomically more damage than a semi does.

I get that everything gets passed on to consumers. With a few trucks with terrible fuel economy, per mile is to your benefit. You’re using almost twice the fuel of a modernized fleet but a mile is still a mile. But you’re math is kind of my point. The people that think we should go per mile so that electric cars are going to pay their “fair share”, aren’t going to be happy when then get hit with a flat tax, because that won’t be “fair”. For guys like you, fair is going to be a bunch of records, time waiting to get scaled, and extra billable hours to you accountant. Someone’s always getting the short end of the stick, it’s definitely always the owner-operator.

In the short term, some miles driven tax under the guise that electric car owners need to pay their “fair share”, I think it’ll be a huge short term windfall to the big carriers with 10,000+ Tractors each and extra taxes and cost for everyone else.

[BehindBlueI's]

Commercial vehicle taxes are just passed on to the consumers anyway. Everything moves by trucks at some point, so increasing taxes on them will just end up taxing every consumer.

I get that everything gets passed on to consumers.

Kind of makes you wonder how any company ever goes out of business since everything just gets passed on to the consumer.