Completely wrong on facts.
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But as You said subsidies MAY in fact retard better products.
This is the case e.g. with US oil and gas and coal interests.
And is ALSO the case with the US PV sellable tax credit, a terrible implementation.
There are more jobs in US PV/green than in oil/gas/coal combined. Today. Growing fast..
The PV jobs are globally competitive ..
And You seem to want to
reduce those US PV/green jobs ??
Why on earth ?
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The EV auto market has doubled every 18 months, more or less, 4-5 years.
About 1-1.5% last year 2017, of new cars sold globally.
In realistic markets EV is 3-5% or so..
The EV growth rate is accelerating.
For == 2 years I have declared that in 2018, +/- 1 year, Big Auto dies and the global auto industry disrupts.
We shall see.
Today .. I expect the collapse of 1 out of 4 of the US Big Auto corps, collapse of VW.
My 2018 prediction, +/- 1 year, stands, for the same.
Yes, I may be wrong on timing.
In 2017 about 1.2 M EVs/NEVs were sold.
In 2018, maybe 2M-2.5M.
In 2019, maybe 3-5M.
I grew through similar major shifts in computing, PCs, RAM, processors, sw, MBs, internet, routers, firewalls, opsys etc.
Markets are forward-looking.
1.
The solar cell manufacturers, china, are profitable. No subsidies.
(About 80% of the chinese companies got killed or went BK in the last 8 years).
Current china PV panels are made at about 0.30$/W costs, and sold around 0.35$-0.38$.
2.
There are zero advanced german solar cell companies.
There never were.
They ran off very high german subsidies, mostly, until around 2010-2013.
3.
I disagree Scottl --
The US should very much subsidise the EV cars, since if YOU do not, the chinese will take over the global EV market.
And then the whole global auto market.
85% of all cars are not sold in the US, and if a US car company is not best-in-class globally it will not survive.
1.
We do not need to subsidize the manufacture of solar cells. The tariffs will serve to level the playing field against subsidized imports.
2.
Do a little research some time on what happened to advanced solar cell development in Germany once the country was flooded with cheap Chinese cells.
IMO subsidies actually retard development as "just good enough to satisfy rules" products get sold in place of more advanced ones whose features make them attractive even at higher cost.
3.
We shouldn't subsidize EV manufacture in the United States. EVs will gain significant market share when they EARN their place in vehicle sales by being attractive replacements for IC vehicles WITHOUT the artificial stimulus of government subsidies.