About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters.

From the article: “About a decade ago, Tesla rigged the dashboard readouts in its electric cars to provide “rosy” projections of how far owners can drive before needing to recharge, a source told Reuters. The automaker last year became so inundated with driving-range complaints that it created a special team to cancel owners’ service appointments.”

  • krische@lemmy.worldEnglish
    52·
    1 year ago

    And that’s a bad thing? Isn’t the entire purpose of that government money to spur development? Seems like it is working as intended then?

    There’s no shortage of reasons to hate Elon, but using government subsidies for their intended purpose seems like a strange one.

    • Alimentar@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Yes it’s bad. Competing for market share should be balanced and free of government intervention. How does a company (small or large) hope to compete against a company that is being subsidised.

      Tesla can then undercut their competitors as they don’t need to make a profit. They’re subsidiesed.

      Then the government has also imposed regulations for car manufacturers, that if they don’t sell enough EVs in the year, they have to pay a penalty by buying carbon credits.

      Well Tesla sells those carbon credits. So they can undercut their competition, entice consumers with lower prices and recoup the losses through subsidies and selling these credits. All thanks to government intervention.

      Basically screwing competition and screwing you. As these have knock on effects.

      • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        Those other companies can qualify for the same subsidies. Sometimes it’s a first mover advantage (subsidies change over time), and sometimes it’s not. But AFAIK, Tesla and SpaceX don’t get any subsidies that other companies couldn’t qualify for. Maybe there are some that foreign companies can’t get, but that’s not unique to the US (see AirBus vs Boeing).

        That said, I’m generally against subsidies. For example, I think the EV subsidies have essentially just changed into additional profit margin. Look at what happened to Tesla Model Y prices when subsidies changed, it basically dropped by the amount of the subsidy reduction. If we removed EV rebates today, I think car companies would drop prices by about that much, which means those rebates are essentially pure profit. I don’t think that’s the case for SpaceX though, but I don’t know enough about that industry to know for sure.