Chevy Volt a Failure - GM to Layoff 1,300

Ford didn't say anything close to that.

 

As a public company? Probably $6, $7 billion. Arguably much more than that if you consider that a great deal of its income has had nothing to do with the sale of cars, it was selling of emissions credits to other car companies that weren't allowed operate without subsidizing Tesla.

 

Tesla has been selling luxury vehicles to stock market millionaires in a cheap money environment. You are acting as if Tesla lost money for 15 years while gobbling up subsidies, and now it has turned the corner. Tesla JUST acheived profitability. ... and has been cutting prices for the last year, giving up margin and may be seeing declining sales right now.

Ford's guidance was pretty sobering. $3 billion is 10 percent of the company's market cap. They are having the same problem everyone is. The batteries are so cost prohibitive, and the only real way to cut that cost is to give back range. ... but people won't buy if they do.

I doubt that Ford is going to be able to eek out positive margins in the next year or two, as hopeful as it is. Profitability? It's not likely anytime in the next 5 years WITHOUT recession. The only two things that I can see feeding that business are: 1) a ban of internal combustion engines or some kind of legislation that forces EVs on people, and / or 2) back to an artifical rate environment that blows up risk assets and/or people's home equity and cuts monthly car payments back in half.

 

Of course railroads would have been built without subsidies. That trope of "we wouldn't have such and such without subsidies" is always head scratching.

The railroad was a transformative technology that made people's lives better. It didn't need to be pushed on anyone at socialized expense. There was huge demand for it.

The irony is that railroad subsidies led to shoddy work, bad logistics. ... a ton of corruption (the subsidization EXISTED as a way for people to line their pockets). ... and as a result of the malinvestment it led to. .. .bankruptcy for almost all of the railroads that were subsidized.

The Great Northern (James J. Hill's railroad), was unsubsidized (how did it ever come into being?), had to be efficient (because there was a profit motive and someone's own capital was on the line). ... and was the only transcontinental railroad that DIDN'T go bankrupt.