Comments by "John Luetjen" (@jehl1963) on "2021 Tesla Model 3 Performance - Is it a Driver's Car? (POV)" video.

  1.  @alexanderhamilton8585  True about the credit, but Tesla (the company) would never have gotten to this point without that vast wealth transfer to fund them. I'm sure that your boss will be happy to hear that you don't believe in measuring things in dollars. It will make the payroll calculations much simpler if they can just zero yours out in the future. ;-)
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  2. I think it's fair to point out a few things. 1) EV's are not "Emissions Free" vehicles. The emissions are merely outsourced to a different location. So while this Tesla was not emitting any emissions while Tedward was driving it , the Covanta Haverhill power plant was emitting emissions generating the electricity needed to charge up the car prior to the drive. 2) Kilowatts per mile, electric cars are no more efficient than gas or diesel cars. You could argue that they are cheaper to operate than internal combustion vehicles because electricity is cheaper, but that is because (at least in Massachusetts) electricity is not taxed, but diesel oil and gasoline are. Specifically gasoline is taxed $0.24 per gallon by Massachusetts, $0.026 for a fuel clean-up fee and another $0.183 cents of Federal tax. None of them apply to electricity. The difference in the tax policy is because it's politically difficult to tax the way that people heat their homes. If you subtract out the taxes on road fuels, the dollars/mile costs of an EV are not significantly different than a gas powered hybrid or an diesel vehicle. Once people stop buying gasoline and diesel fuel, you can be sure that governments will start to tax electricity to make up for the last revenue. 3) Finally, as Tedward points out, this is a $70,000 plus car. The reality is that Teslas should actually be even more expensive if costed fairly, but instead US tax policy has chosen to use taxpayer money for subsidies to Tesla (in the form of tax credits for EV purchases), as well as mandating increasing the overhead costs of non-EV vehicles by forcing their manufacturers to buy carbon tax credits from Tesla -- even as I have pointed out above -- Teslas actually do consume carbon based fuels -- just not within sight of their owners. If these credits and subsidies didn't exist, this $70K Tesla would be even more expensive. Regarding the product, I think that a big oversight is the lack of a Heads-up Display, which should be "slam-dunk" for Tesla. Forcing the driver to take their eyes off of the road to pick-out information in a large, cluttered and constantly changing central screen is a big ergonomics goof. Even in the video ( for example at 4:00) you can see Tedward splitting his attention between the road and traffic ahead of him, and the touch-screen display.
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