OPINION:
By all accounts, the all-electric Tesla is a dreamboat of an automobile. It looks good, it’s comfortable and it’s a joy to drive. It has innovative engineering and slick handling, and it’s faster than most sports cars. Because it uses no gasoline, it’s “environmentally friendly,” but like a lot of good things, it costs a lot.
A Tesla costs a not-so-cool hundred grand, not counting the extras. That’s more than most commuters, middle-class families and the rest of us can pay for four wheels to move us from here to there. It’s a price that keeps people driving Fords, Chevys and Hondas or even a Buick, which are not as fast, as comfortable or trendy, but get them there in luxury enough at a third the price of a Tesla. The average American watching a Tesla cruise past him on the freeway assumes the driver is just the sort of one-percenter who curdles the cream in Elizabeth Warren’s decaf.
Even a company run by a crony capitalist with friends in high places could find ways to make such a dreamy car cost less and put it within range of middle-class buyers. But with friends in high places, you don’t have to. Elon Musk, the engineering genius who dreamed up the Tesla, knows how to ride the green wave. Buyers of his car get a lot of help from people who aren’t even friends.
In California, where greenies and Tesla fans dwell in abundance, every $100,000 car is subsidized by a $48,000 state subsidy, extracted from drivers of those Fords, Chevys and Hondas. Buyers in other states get a deal that is not quite as good, but pretty good nonetheless. Taxpayers in those states pick up only $20,000 of the Tesla price.
Analysts at Technology Equity Strategies warn, however, that more and more taxpayers are realizing that Mr. Musk and his fellow greenies are taking them for an expensive ride. Some states are considering cutting back on the subsidies, particularly since cars like the Tesla don’t curtail emissions as much as first thought, anyway.
In fact, a TES analyst has come up with a less-costly way of curtailing emissions without subsidizing the rich and pretentious. The private luxury jets that ferry Mr. Musk and corporate chiefs from hither to yon consume 2.5 billion gallons of aviation fuel every year. That’s 50 times as much as the savings from all the electric vehicles on the nation’s streets and highways. Mr. Musk flies in a Falcon that everyone helped him buy. The Falcon consumes 268 gallons of jet fuel an hour, and the fuel it burns in a year could supply 350 Lincolns or Cadillacs.
If Mr. Musk and his green friends and neighbors would fly on commercial airliners like the rest of us — first-class accommodations looked pretty grand the last time we stole a glance through the curtain separating us from the one-percenters — everybody could save money. The environment would appreciate it.
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