Tesla News

A requirement to be
President of the United States

First, understand, this is not a partisan political statement on my part. It doesn't matter what political party a candidate is in. One of the requirements for someone running for the office of the U.S. President should be to get your facts straight. Here, a candidate for the presidency states things that are objectively false. These are not matters of opinion, these are matters of fact. Regardless of whether he is saying these falsehoods because he is clueless, or because he knows better but chooses to misinform the American people for some reason, the fact is, he is saying inaccurate things. Personally, I want a President who does not come across as a dumb-ass or, if not a dumb-ass, does not gaslight the American people and lie to them.

FACT CHECK TIME

1. The vast majority of the Electrical Vehicles (EVs) sold in America to date have been made in America by an American automobile company. They will not "all be built in China". One day, if Chinese-made EVs are allowed to be sold in the U.S., Americans will have a choice to buy a Chinese-made EV or an American-made EV. Because of import taxes, the American-made EVs will likely be less expensive than their Chinese counterparts. And if the prices are the same, then the Chinese EVs will likely be cheaply made, which would be a reason to buy the American-made EVs. But many of the Chinese EVs that are currently made in China would not meet U.S. safety standards, so we won't see those here.

2. EVs will hurt the United Auto Workers, but not because they are EVs. It will be because the American automobile manufacturers did not want to make EVs, and hoped that Tesla's efforts to make and sell EVs would fail. They gambled on Tesla failing so that they wouldn't have to make EVs. Pivoting their assembly lines away from tailpipe cars to EVs would cost them a lot of money, and would lower their profits over a ten year period. So they bet on Tesla failing. But consumers loved Tesla's EVs just as they loved the EV that GM made in 1999. But when GM didn't have to make EVs to be able to sell all their models in California because of a change in California law, GM crushed all their EVs, breathed a sigh of relief, and continued making only fossil-fueled cars. This decision is what spurred Tesla's CEO, Elon Musk, to make compelling EVs. And now that Tesla has sold over 5 million EVs, it's here to stay, and now Ford, GM, and Stellantis (and Toyota, Honda, etc) are way behind the curve. So any union workers who lose their jobs because of the profit-motivated decisions that the CEOs of those companies made have only those CEOs to blame, not EVs.

3. EVs are not "a disaster for American consumers". They are now at price parity with gasoline cars, they can last longer than gasoline cars, and their Total Cost of Ownership is way less than a comparable gasoline car (fueling costs and out-of-warranty repairs are less than a gasoline car over the life of ownership). And EVs can be safer than a car with a gasoline engine under the hood (if the EV is made by a manufacturer who cares about safety). So EVs are not "too expensive"; just the opposite.

4. As to EVs "don't go far enough", this was true 10 years ago, but not today. If they didn't go far enough, Tesla would have not sold over 5 million of them.

5. A gas car takes about 9 minutes in total to fill up at a gas station. If the owner of an EV owns a home, the EV is "filled up" overnight, so the amount of time it takes to do that fill up is irrelevant, but the actual time is 6 seconds (to plug in and unplug the car from its charger). Yes, EVs that are charged at a public charging station take longer to fill up than a gas car, but the tradeoffs appear to be worth it, otherwise Tesla would not have sold over 5 million of their EVs (safer, cost less to operate and maintain).

6. Mr. Trump's "...and pose various dangers under certain atmospheric conditions" makes no sense to those who are EV experts. Someone will have to ask him what he meant by this because we can't figure it out.

7. Saying that all auto workers in the U.S. will be "wiped out" if EV adoption increases is a ridiculous thing to say since many EVs are made right here in the U.S. And if the "Big 3" automakers can successfully transition to making EVs (which they all say they can do), those autoworkers will continue to have jobs. They'll just be installing electric motors instead of gasoline engines. And if those automakers instead "go under", it will be because they didn't see the handwriting on the wall. So the blame lies with them, not with EVs.

QUESTION: Why does Mr. Trump not comment on any of the EV's benefits?

   * No tailpipes, so no PM2.5 air pollution particles (this saves lives)
   * No CO2 emissions from the cars
   * Lower Total Cost of Ownership compared to gas cars (explained above)
   * EV batteries can last the life of the car, and can be recycled 100%
   * EVs reduce (actually help eliminate) America's dependence on foreign oil

So the question is: Is Mr. Trump totally clueless about the above facts? Or is he (and his party) beholden to certain powerful industries like the fossil fuel industry (who hate EVs)? Personally, I don't want a President that does the bidding of powerful industries, or one that gaslights the America people. And certainly not one who is instead totally clueless about the subject he is stating facts about.