ICE Boxster/Cayman will return!!

[whitex]

2025 - 270 Turbo GTs sold in US - So these are very unique models.

256 of 2023 Taycan Turbo Cross Turismo sold in the US, so even more unique. Want to buy mine for only MSRP?

Sponsored

 

[Gino]

I’ll be honest that I don’t know the exact details without looking them up, but I thought we DID get significantly subsidized solar.

You’ve been able to get a 30% tax credit for decades for putting on solar panels. Businesses get the same credit.

As posted before, the oil subsidies are only 10-30 cents per gallon and oil taxes are much more than that.

I don’t think you would want solar to get the same tax treatment as oil. It would be MUCH worse.

There are issues, but oil subsidies vs solar isn’t the issue.

Unfortunately subsidies for residential solar is no longer anywhere near as good investment an investment as before when utilities had to pay the same rate they charge a homeowner when they turn their meter backwards and become a energy supplier to the grid.
Now the most you can get paid per kWh is less than 10 cents/kwh during peak energy demand in Orange County for example which is 63 cents/kWh. That’s a huge spread that was taken away from solar, wind & hydro generation from residential customers. I looked into getting solar but not being able to make any real money on the excess power I generate makes it almost worthless to generate more than you need. The power company wants to make sure you must use their power during peak periods at 63 cents/kWH rather than let me sell power back to the utility at the same rate.
Unless there are better, cheaper, more efficient battery storage solutions then less than 10 cents/kWh won’t be worth making the investment unless you plan to charge multiple EVs every day and be able to use the batteries in EVs to power our homes during peak demand.
The power companies will hate this since homeowners could then get away with only using energy from the grid in an emergency. Of course the utilities will jack up the rates if you don’t use enough power which will only force more people to generate their own power. The people who will get hurt are the customers who can’t generate their own power or afford an EV to use as a back up power supply to their homes.
At some point in time I have no doubt I will generate my own electricity or hydrogen to supply my residences and tell the utilities to take a hike. This is why even the AI data centers are planning to build their own wind, solar & nuclear power generation facilities to run their data centers rather than pay a huge premium to utilities to add capacity and sell it to them at a premium they aren’t willing to pay.
That’s just what we need. Proliferation of small nuclear power plants all over the country which will be a nightmare to insure are safe & secure.
Talk about a national security issue… How would you like to live within 20 miles of a nuclear reactor? Not me… I worked in safety controls for nuclear reactors back in the 1980s. Small nuclear reactors at every data center are just small nuclear bombs spread throughout the US for our enemies to easily compromise and detonate. Nuclear is good but only when controlled well with all the required safety & security to insure they never get used against us.

 

[FlyingPoint]

Talk about a national security issue… How would you like to live within 20 miles of a nuclear reactor? Not me… I worked in safety controls for nuclear reactors back in the 1980s. Small nuclear reactors at every data center are just small nuclear bombs spread throughout the US for our enemies to easily compromise and detonate. Nuclear is good but only when controlled well with all the required safety & security to insure they never get used against us.

Respectfully, much has changed since the 1980's of this I am sure, as I get to look in the mirror every day.

 

[pjg03d]

I’ll be honest that I don’t know the exact details without looking them up, but I thought we DID get significantly subsidized solar.

You’ve been able to get a 30% tax credit for decades for putting on solar panels. Businesses get the same credit.

As posted before, the oil subsidies are only 10-30 cents per gallon and oil taxes are much more than that.

I don’t think you would want solar to get the same tax treatment as oil. It would be MUCH worse.

There are issues, but oil subsidies vs solar isn’t the issue.

Re: oil subsidies, it goes well beyond a flat dollar amount per gallon. The US military is the largest single institutional consumer of oil products on the planet; sure is nice to have such an audience of one. Oil companies also receive highly favorable deals from the BLM for drilling lease rights on federal land - this was somewhat addressed with the IRA in 2022 but not completely, and Trump et al already rolled back leasing restrictions Biden put in place. Oil companies are also able to deduct all "intangible drilling costs", which are basically all costs not associated directly with the operation of a well. Carbon capture tax credits are also a pretty dubious means of 'fighting climate change', serving to both pump the stocks of companies like Tesla while allowing oil+gas companies to avoid enormous amounts of taxes, working as more of a shell game than actually reducing carbon output. The taxes they *do* pay are often largely deferred.

It is obviously, due to our extensive marriage over time to oil, that so many complex changes to the tax code, so many politically motivated deals, etc have occurred to keep the oil flowing and keep it relatively cheap. We needed it for a long time to have a 'functional' country and planet. It will take a lot of time for alternative carbon-neutral energy sources to catch up, and unfortunately we are already seeing energy companies and shareholders reap the benefits of subsidies in the same way oil companies have for decades - through favorable land acquisitions, suppression of distributive solar vs corporation owned solar farms, etc. Oil didn't have actual competition in the space when it emerged; carbon-neutral green energy has a ton of it.

We did have available some subsidizing for the end consumer, in the form of a tax credit (which for all intents and purposes is now gone), which is entirely situationally-dependent and not useful for everyone. Its usefulness also compounds positively or negatively depending on your state or regional provider's policy on net metering. There was also no tax credit or assistance or subsidy for the associated roof prep needed for solar install - so if you have an aging roof, go ahead and tack on $10k+ to your install. A subsidy that is not useful for many people in states with differing approaches to solar net metering is not a terribly useful one.

Tax credit subsidies are significant if you were going to have a large tax bill for the year - i.e. more beneficial for higher earners. This is a suboptimal approach, for what should be obvious reasons. It was better than nothing but resulted in what was likely installers jacking up rates since more people were willing to absorb the price hikes anticipating the tax break - and their audience was more likely to have some means. I would have much preferred to see, like I would with EVs, more economic incentive at point of manufacture *and* install to reduce *cost* (and not credit a tax bill) for the end consumer while making it economically worthwhile for manufacturers and installers.

Legislation that would soft-cap solar install prices per kWh installed to reduce overall the break-even point, encourage battery storage addons, and provide very low-interest financing would have done more to encourage mass solar roll-out; but energy companies lobby hard and are not interested in everyone having panels on their roofs. Energy independence is anathema to their mission. Financing in particular is such a layup; solar installers all have cash prices, or you can pay their incredibly onerous finance rates, (if they even offer it) usually starting around 8-9% - and for some reason often come with installation price hikes. You can finance privately with your bank/credit union for whatever rate they'll offer (best I could find was 6% while I was shopping, with plenty of home equity and terrific credit). Given the, uh, immediacy of climate change, I would like to see rates closer to like, 3% capped, and easily accessible. But then I also am of the opinion that we should have accessible ~3% primary resident homeowner financing available to anyone that can meet basic qualifications.

In my state you have to *pay* Georgia Power to opt-in to your power mix being predominantly solar, from their solar farms, that cost them relatively little to operate. They do not participate in net metering, so you can't send power back to the grid during peak generation to compensate for overnight grid usage/cost. So despite a decent tax credit for install, it doesn't make much financial sense anywhere in the state to have had panels installed unless you planned to be in your house for decades.

The net-net here is that we have decades upon decades of sweetheart deals and very complex changes to tax code to support the energy sector's oil exploration and refinement. Which, again, made sense because we relied on oil to build the planet. We can no longer do that, and we are not acting fast enough with nowhere near the same level of economic and legislative support to properly support and encourage the carbon neutral energy technology that we already have. If we were, you'd see a lot more solar panels on rooftops.

 

[Gino]

Re: oil subsidies, it goes well beyond a flat dollar amount per gallon. The US military is the largest single institutional consumer of oil products on the planet; sure is nice to have such an audience of one. Oil companies also receive highly favorable deals from the BLM for drilling lease rights on federal land - this was somewhat addressed with the IRA in 2022 but not completely, and Trump et al already rolled back leasing restrictions Biden put in place. Oil companies are also able to deduct all "intangible drilling costs", which are basically all costs not associated directly with the operation of a well. Carbon capture tax credits are also a pretty dubious means of 'fighting climate change', serving to both pump the stocks of companies like Tesla while allowing oil+gas companies to avoid enormous amounts of taxes, working as more of a shell game than actually reducing carbon output. The taxes they *do* pay are often largely deferred.

It is obviously, due to our extensive marriage over time to oil, that so many complex changes to the tax code, so many politically motivated deals, etc have occurred to keep the oil flowing and keep it relatively cheap. We needed it for a long time to have a 'functional' country and planet. It will take a lot of time for alternative carbon-neutral energy sources to catch up, and unfortunately we are already seeing energy companies and shareholders reap the benefits of subsidies in the same way oil companies have for decades - through favorable land acquisitions, suppression of distributive solar vs corporation owned solar farms, etc. Oil didn't have actual competition in the space when it emerged; carbon-neutral green energy has a ton of it.

We did have available some subsidizing for the end consumer, in the form of a tax credit (which for all intents and purposes is now gone), which is entirely situationally-dependent and not useful for everyone. Its usefulness also compounds positively or negatively depending on your state or regional provider's policy on net metering. There was also no tax credit or assistance or subsidy for the associated roof prep needed for solar install - so if you have an aging roof, go ahead and tack on $10k+ to your install. A subsidy that is not useful for many people in states with differing approaches to solar net metering is not a terribly useful one.

Tax credit subsidies are significant if you were going to have a large tax bill for the year - i.e. more beneficial for higher earners. This is a suboptimal approach, for what should be obvious reasons. It was better than nothing but resulted in what was likely installers jacking up rates since more people were willing to absorb the price hikes anticipating the tax break - and their audience was more likely to have some means. I would have much preferred to see, like I would with EVs, more economic incentive at point of manufacture *and* install to reduce *cost* (and not credit a tax bill) for the end consumer while making it economically worthwhile for manufacturers and installers.

Legislation that would soft-cap solar install prices per kWh installed to reduce overall the break-even point, encourage battery storage addons, and provide very low-interest financing would have done more to encourage mass solar roll-out; but energy companies lobby hard and are not interested in everyone having panels on their roofs. Energy independence is anathema to their mission. Financing in particular is such a layup; solar installers all have cash prices, or you can pay their incredibly onerous finance rates, (if they even offer it) usually starting around 8-9% - and for some reason often come with installation price hikes. You can finance privately with your bank/credit union for whatever rate they'll offer (best I could find was 6% while I was shopping, with plenty of home equity and terrific credit). Given the, uh, immediacy of climate change, I would like to see rates closer to like, 3% capped, and easily accessible. But then I also am of the opinion that we should have accessible ~3% primary resident homeowner financing available to anyone that can meet basic qualifications.

In my state you have to *pay* Georgia Power to opt-in to your power mix being predominantly solar, from their solar farms, that cost them relatively little to operate. They do not participate in net metering, so you can't send power back to the grid during peak generation to compensate for overnight grid usage/cost. So despite a decent tax credit for install, it doesn't make much financial sense anywhere in the state to have had panels installed unless you planned to be in your house for decades.

The net-net here is that we have decades upon decades of sweetheart deals and very complex changes to tax code to support the energy sector's oil exploration and refinement. Which, again, made sense because we relied on oil to build the planet. We can no longer do that, and we are not acting fast enough with nowhere near the same level of economic and legislative support to properly support and encourage the carbon neutral energy technology that we already have. If we were, you'd see a lot more solar panels on rooftops.

You’re speaking to the choir…

 

[pjg03d]

You’re speaking to the choir…

Sure but even the choir can be off-key. It is a misunderstanding to believe that solar subsidies have in any way approached the level of subsidy the oil/gas industry has taken, let alone the tax loopholes/credits. They are several orders of magnitude apart.

 

[69Mach390]

Re: oil subsidies, it goes well beyond a flat dollar amount per gallon. The US military is the largest single institutional consumer of oil products on the planet; sure is nice to have such an audience of one. Oil companies also receive highly favorable deals from the BLM for drilling lease rights on federal land - this was somewhat addressed with the IRA in 2022 but not completely, and Trump et al already rolled back leasing restrictions Biden put in place. Oil companies are also able to deduct all "intangible drilling costs", which are basically all costs not associated directly with the operation of a well. Carbon capture tax credits are also a pretty dubious means of 'fighting climate change', serving to both pump the stocks of companies like Tesla while allowing oil+gas companies to avoid enormous amounts of taxes, working as more of a shell game than actually reducing carbon output. The taxes they *do* pay are often largely deferred.

It is obviously, due to our extensive marriage over time to oil, that so many complex changes to the tax code, so many politically motivated deals, etc have occurred to keep the oil flowing and keep it relatively cheap. We needed it for a long time to have a 'functional' country and planet. It will take a lot of time for alternative carbon-neutral energy sources to catch up, and unfortunately we are already seeing energy companies and shareholders reap the benefits of subsidies in the same way oil companies have for decades - through favorable land acquisitions, suppression of distributive solar vs corporation owned solar farms, etc. Oil didn't have actual competition in the space when it emerged; carbon-neutral green energy has a ton of it.

We did have available some subsidizing for the end consumer, in the form of a tax credit (which for all intents and purposes is now gone), which is entirely situationally-dependent and not useful for everyone. Its usefulness also compounds positively or negatively depending on your state or regional provider's policy on net metering. There was also no tax credit or assistance or subsidy for the associated roof prep needed for solar install - so if you have an aging roof, go ahead and tack on $10k+ to your install. A subsidy that is not useful for many people in states with differing approaches to solar net metering is not a terribly useful one.

Tax credit subsidies are significant if you were going to have a large tax bill for the year - i.e. more beneficial for higher earners. This is a suboptimal approach, for what should be obvious reasons. It was better than nothing but resulted in what was likely installers jacking up rates since more people were willing to absorb the price hikes anticipating the tax break - and their audience was more likely to have some means. I would have much preferred to see, like I would with EVs, more economic incentive at point of manufacture *and* install to reduce *cost* (and not credit a tax bill) for the end consumer while making it economically worthwhile for manufacturers and installers.

Legislation that would soft-cap solar install prices per kWh installed to reduce overall the break-even point, encourage battery storage addons, and provide very low-interest financing would have done more to encourage mass solar roll-out; but energy companies lobby hard and are not interested in everyone having panels on their roofs. Energy independence is anathema to their mission. Financing in particular is such a layup; solar installers all have cash prices, or you can pay their incredibly onerous finance rates, (if they even offer it) usually starting around 8-9% - and for some reason often come with installation price hikes. You can finance privately with your bank/credit union for whatever rate they'll offer (best I could find was 6% while I was shopping, with plenty of home equity and terrific credit). Given the, uh, immediacy of climate change, I would like to see rates closer to like, 3% capped, and easily accessible. But then I also am of the opinion that we should have accessible ~3% primary resident homeowner financing available to anyone that can meet basic qualifications.

In my state you have to *pay* Georgia Power to opt-in to your power mix being predominantly solar, from their solar farms, that cost them relatively little to operate. They do not participate in net metering, so you can't send power back to the grid during peak generation to compensate for overnight grid usage/cost. So despite a decent tax credit for install, it doesn't make much financial sense anywhere in the state to have had panels installed unless you planned to be in your house for decades.

The net-net here is that we have decades upon decades of sweetheart deals and very complex changes to tax code to support the energy sector's oil exploration and refinement. Which, again, made sense because we relied on oil to build the planet. We can no longer do that, and we are not acting fast enough with nowhere near the same level of economic and legislative support to properly support and encourage the carbon neutral energy technology that we already have. If we were, you'd see a lot more solar panels on rooftops.

You would think that living in the “sunshine state” would make solar panels on your roof a no brainer.

Instead it makes it nearly impossible to get hurricane insurance and because our electricity is cheap here, never “pays for itself” despite the 30% tax credit.

The hard part of it all comes down to economics. Alternative energies wouldn’t be alternative if they were straight up cheaper.

About 18 years ago the “largest solar farm in the country” was going into my county. The cost per home it would power, just for the construction, was about a hundred thousand dollars. That math doesn’t math. And it only would power about 15,000 homes and take up a huge plot of land (750 acres).

Would have been cheaper to just give everyone free panels on their roofs.

 

[pjg03d]

You would think that living in the “sunshine state” would make solar panels on your roof a no brainer.

Instead it makes it nearly impossible to get hurricane insurance and because our electricity is cheap here, never “pays for itself” despite the 30% tax credit.

The hard part of it all comes down to economics. Alternative energies wouldn’t be alternative if they were straight up cheaper.

About 18 years ago the “largest solar farm in the country” was going into my county. The cost per home it would power, just for the construction, was about a hundred thousand dollars. That math doesn’t math. And it only would power about 15,000 homes and take up a huge plot of land (750 acres).

Would have been cheaper to just give everyone free panels on their roofs.

As a native Floridian, agree on all counts for Florida - there are arguments for wind-resistant solar farms to be a better approach to solar than distributive/rooftop in high-wind prone regions. The result to this approach, though, ends up being Duke Energy owning all the solar farms and charging a ton for it, though, and not community/co-op energy companies.

However, wind and solar are now cheaper to produce than fossil fuel sources. Fossil fuels are completely being kept alive by shareholder (which transforms into political donor) demand, subsidies and a fear of transition.

 

[Loe]

odd that the insider slide deck presentation they still used the current 718 in the picture (instead of a wrapped up 718-EV)

It did mention HEV and BEV for the 718, but honestly don't recall if there was an ICE-only model on that deck. **edit** I'll confirm this Weds evening

 

[Gino]

Sure but even the choir can be off-key. It is a misunderstanding to believe that solar subsidies have in any way approached the level of subsidy the oil/gas industry has taken, let alone the tax loopholes/credits. They are several orders of magnitude apart.

The oil & gas lobby has been around a very very long time and they have deep hooks in our politics, unfortunately for alternative energy sources & products like EVs…

 

[69Mach390]

As a native Floridian, agree on all counts for Florida - there are arguments for wind-resistant solar farms to be a better approach to solar than distributive/rooftop in high-wind prone regions. The result to this approach, though, ends up being Duke Energy owning all the solar farms and charging a ton for it, though, and not community/co-op energy companies.

However, wind and solar are now cheaper to produce than fossil fuel sources. Fossil fuels are completely being kept alive by shareholder (which transforms into political donor) demand, subsidies and a fear of transition.

Interesting. I would be curious to dig into the numbers a bit more. They use “lifetime energy cost,” so I would love to see the timeline that they’re using. The longer the timeline, the longer the “break even point” for example.

Geography also matters significantly for solar and wind. As does “land cost” as they take up significantly more acreage than a coal or natural gas or nuclear plant.

I think the headline may be a bit simplistic without know the real details.

They did note they’re talking about building new power plants. Existing plants are still significantly cheaper than building a new solar or wind farm. So fossil fuel plants are also being kept alive because they already exist.

It’s like comparing the costs of ownership of a used ICE vehicle to a new BEV. The used car will still be cheaper to own. Different math when comparing new to new.

 

[Gino]

Interesting. I would be curious to dig into the numbers a bit more. They use “lifetime energy cost,” so I would love to see the timeline that they’re using. The longer the timeline, the longer the “break even point” for example.

Geography also matters significantly for solar and wind. As does “land cost” as they take up significantly more acreage than a coal or natural gas or nuclear plant.

I think the headline may be a bit simplistic without know the real details.

They did note they’re talking about building new power plants. Existing plants are still significantly cheaper than building a new solar or wind farm. So fossil fuel plants are also being kept alive because they already exist.

It’s like comparing the costs of ownership of a used ICE vehicle to a new BEV. The used car will still be cheaper to own. Different math when comparing new to new.

Land cost is not straight forward with solar since you can mount solar panels on roofs, in parking lots and in wide open fields where land is abundant. Even in California they are considering mounting solar panels over the canal in California through the Central Valley to reduce evaporation.
Solar panels last at least 25 years with little to no maintenance compared to any fossil fired, LNG or nuclear power plant. Solar should be subsidized if oil & gas is since we actually need all of the above energy sources while still being able to reduce emissions in the long term.

 

[69Mach390]

Land cost is not straight forward with solar since you can mount solar panels on roofs, in parking lots and in wide open fields where land is abundant. Even in California they are considering mounting solar panels over the canal in California through the Central Valley to reduce evaporation.
Solar panels last at least 25 years with little to no maintenance compared to any fossil fired, LNG or nuclear power plant. Solar should be subsidized if oil & gas is since we actually need all of the above energy sources while still being able to reduce emissions in the long term.

The panels are only part of the issue, it’s the battery storage that’s more expensive and doesn’t last as long. It also isn’t sunny everywhere.

Either way, it was a comparison of power plants, not necessarily home solar. For “mass use” home solar works, but requires the homeowner to pay for most of it. Just curious about the details of the numbers claiming it’s cheaper.

I’ve run the numbers personally on home solar here and it’s never made sense from a pure economic standpoint, but our electric bills are cheap and roof costs absurd. My last roof cost over $100k, and the insurance companies drop you if you’re over 15 years old.

 

[Gino]

The panels are only part of the issue, it’s the battery storage that’s more expensive and doesn’t last as long. It also isn’t sunny everywhere.

Either way, it was a comparison of power plants, not necessarily home solar. For “mass use” home solar works, but requires the homeowner to pay for most of it. Just curious about the details of the numbers claiming it’s cheaper.

I’ve run the numbers personally on home solar here and it’s never made sense from a pure economic standpoint, but our electric bills are cheap and roof costs absurd. My last roof cost over $100k, and the insurance companies drop you if you’re over 15 years old.

In California & Nevada solar is very cost effective for commercial since there is consistent sun as well as open desert for large area installations and even more cost effective when installing on roofs & parking lots.
You are correct that energy storage is the most costly part of these installations since they have not reached the ideal lifespan to compete head to head with grid utility supply.
Wind is big in California but mostly commercial rather than residential since there are areas with consistent wind.
The electric utilities continue to push rates higher which will drive commercial & residential consumers to generate their own power but the utilities make it very difficult & expensive to connect to their grid and it’s far more difficult to be completely self sustaining.
There are many types of energy storage technologies from hydroelectric pumped storage, hydrogen generation/storage using solar to crack hydrogen and an array of different battery technologies, super capacitors but flow batteries are typically used in grid scale energy storage and it is reliable and cost effective for commercial solar installations especially in areas like the southwest where the risk of panel damaging hail is extremely low.
The cost to maintain coal fired plants is higher than commercial solar installations in the southwest.
Commercial-scale generation utility-scale solar PV is the most cost-effective option per MWh today. Nothing else comes close and this includes extremely reliable, very long service life flow battery storage systems. It doesn’t mean there aren’t opportunities to deploy commercial grid scale solar in other states with less sunshine but the amount of energy which can be produced by the same panel technology will be significantly reduced requiring larger panel area.
This is why the second most cost effective energy generation is from wind which works well in the plains and along the coasts. The big advantage for wind is the ability to generate 24/7.
Hydroelectric is actually the cheapest but there are very limited locations to supply grid scale power. Hydroelectric also uses a technology called pumped storage to increase power generation output during high demand periods.
At night when the full generator capacity goes unused the excess power is used to pump water from the river below into a mountain reservoir above which store energy in water which is then released through another generator to supply additional power at peak demand.
The easiest power generation technologies to install in the shortest timeframe with the lowest cost per MWH are Solar, Wind & Nuclear but Nuclear has it’s safety & national security issues which make it harder to deploy near dense population centers.
The answer is and always will be “all of the above” since every geographic area has it’s unique requirements which makes the decision for you when selecting the most cost effective power generation method.
In California we have all options on the table…

 

[freinando]

About as collectible as an iPhone 5.

Electronics are rarely collectible because the tech just ends up being outdated and the costs to repair astronomical.

At some point the tech improvements plateau. I got rid of my iphone 12 for a 16 model and wonder to this day what changed after 4 years.
Most people don’t need more than 200 miles of range. What we need is more charging infrastructure. I have a house and charge at home, but I reckon most can’t.
Also, cost of repairing what? All cars have software and electronics. The battery? I guess it would cost the same as repairing a blown engine. What we also need is more indy shops getting up to speed with EV tech.

Sponsored