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by toomuchtodo 2287 days ago
The ITC tax credit for solar and storage, the EV tax credit, and the electric vehicle charging station credit all existed before Tesla (and all other solar, storage, and vehicle manufacturers are eligible for these credits, not just Tesla, you just have to build the product). Tesla did lobby for vehicle manufacturers to be allowed to sell directly to consumers, which I cannot see any reason that shouldn't be allowed in a free market. Can you prove they lobbied for these policies?

A Nissan Leaf is a glorified golf cart with an air cooled battery that has no longevity and no fast charge network. There is a reason they are so cheap used. It is not a realistic competitor to an internal combustion vehicle, such that a Model 3, Y, S, or X is. That is why Tesla is successful and has sold their millionth car, and is running at a 400k unit/year run rate (based on Fremont and Gigafactory 3 production data). There is no need for Tesla to meet unrealistic expectations such as your example ("I'm quite happy with my used Nissan Leaf. Price? $8500. Let's see Tesla beat that.") when there is an entire worldwide auto market with consumers ready to pay top dollar for the cars Tesla builds (in the US, average sales prices of a new car in the US is $35K and 17 million cars a year are sold), and Tesla commands roughly 1/3rd of the Chinese EV market as of February 2020.