NSMB Automotive Thread ( Q&A, Car Porn, etc)

dantes chevy 1500.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnLLv5xTfVA

http://www.pinkbike.com/video//

dantes chevy 1500.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KnLLv5xTfVA

Sounds fucking awesome.

That reminds me a lot of my 96 Sierra (4.3l v6 vortec, single cab short box).

this truck started its life as a 4.3 with a 5speed, its currently running a fairly built 327 with a saginaw 4speed. 327's got a lot of blow by, so its getting swapped out for a 377ci (4.155" bore x 3.48 stroke") with aluminum heads. and a super t10 4speed with a better clutch.

That's awesome!

A couple days ago The Province had a scathing article on Tesla and Elon Musk. I don't know how to find an online version of it - maybe someone else does?

http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/iphone/homepage.aspx#_articleview?issue=14962015051500000000001001[HTML_REMOVED]page=92[HTML_REMOVED]article=941909804[HTML_REMOVED]previewmode=2[HTML_REMOVED]noredirect=false

This one?

The writer seems a little too focused on the bottom line while not giving a shit about supporting developers of new and useful technology. He also seems to think Rome was built in a day.

Link wants a login, so couldn't read it. But your summary is pretty typical of the run of the mill Tesla/Musk hater. Focused on the short term, or holding a huge short interest in the stock.

almost done welding my rustang…

almost done welding my rustang…

your to late…

they already finished filming the new mad max movie….

:beer:

Here's that article… (I take no sides)

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Energy gave Elon Musk’s Tesla company an injection of $468 million US.

Musk is the chief executive of the only independent company to successfully bring an electric vehicle to market, the poster boy for battery powered innovation. Most recently, he unveiled a new home and commercial power station to great fanfare.

He is also — and this you read less about — a serial, almost kleptomaniacal, corporate welfare bum whose greatest talent seems to be sucking at the U.S. government’s teat for personal gain and glory.

Oh, all you Tesla fans out there are offended, are you? You feel I’m unjustly characterizing your hero? OK then, let’s take a look at some numbers, shall we?

Way back in 2010, when it was in particularly dire straits (reports at the time claimed the company had less than $9 million in its piggy bank), Tesla was funded to the tune of $468 million (all figures in U.S. dollars) by the U.S. Department of Energy. Tesla, of course, was not the only electric vehicle maker so blessed. Indeed, it was not even the recipient of the largest loan: that honour goes to now-bankrupt Fisker, blessed as it was with $529 million of government largesse.

Apologists for the green-car movement will be quick to point out — get those angry emails started — that Tesla repaid the D.O.E. in full and ahead of schedule. Never mind that Musk actually borrowed much of the money from Goldman Sachs to repay the loan. Or that, in a fit of hypocrisy worthy of Eliot Spitzer, after he repaid the loan Musk told one and all the American government should no longer provide such assistance to fledgling EV makers. Nope, even giving the company full credit for the speedy repayment of its debts doesn’t change the fact that Tesla continues raiding taxpayers’ pockets like the proverbial thief in the night.

Understand, for instance, one government agency or another has subsidized the vast majority of the Model S Teslas sold. In the U.S., that’s $7,500 in federal credits plus additional state-by-state benefits (California kicks in $2,500).

In Canada, the three major provinces (B.C., Ontario and Quebec) where most Teslas are sold offer similar incentives.

And some countries — such as Norway, which foregoes its 25 per cent VAT on EVs — have pushed their green initiatives even harder.

Even if we were to take the most reasonable of figures for this largesse — let’s say $7,500 for argument’s sake — and factor in that Tesla has now sold some 70,000 copies of the Model S, that would mean that taxpayers, mostly, but not exclusively, in the U.S., have contributed a cool half-billion dollars to Tesla’s bottom line.

But wait, there’s more. Another source of revenue has been selling green-car tax credits to automakers struggling to make California’s quota for zero-tailpipe-emission vehicles.

The Golden State’s complicated credit system has been generous to Tesla. Far better forensic accountants than I struggle with determining the exact amount of money transferred from competing automakers to Tesla on the government’s behest, but the largest number I could find was $68 million — for one fiscal quarter.

No less an authority than Forbes estimated that each and every one of the Teslas sold in California in the first quarter of 2013 averaged $13,600 in green tax credits.

Just to be clear, that’s on top of the $7,500 the federal government and the $2,500 California kicked in as rebates.

Tesla’s rapacious panhandling doesn’t stop there, however.

Remember Tesla’s much publicized battery-swapping experiment? It turns out that California’s credit system offers even more of those precious credits if the battery can be completely recharged/replaced tout de suite. And, according to Forbes, the Model S’s swappable battery is nothing more than a Faustian ploy to qualify for more of those valuable credits.

Musk himself tweeted just two months ago that “supercharging is the future” and that battery-swapping is better limited to commercial traffic.

Two years after the big press announcement, there is but a single Tesla battery-changing station operating in California, with just one operable swapping bay.

Want more? In 2014, the California Air Resources Board, then running out of money to fund the state’s EV incentive program, tried to eliminate the subsidies on EVs costing more than $60,000. Care to guess who (successfully) lobbied against the revision?

Nor does Musk limit his moneygrubbing to the automotive industry, having recently announced his company’s foray into stationary storage batteries. Claiming demand is “crazy off the hook,” Tesla’s CEO says the company has received reservations for some 38,000 Powerwall home units and 2,500 more for the larger Powerpack commercial version in its first week of sales.

Wow, right? Good for Tesla and good for the environment, not to mention power conservation. Except that this business, too, is heavily subsidized, California (again!) offering generous incentives through its Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP). And Musk is again feeding at the trough, Bloomberg Business reporting that “Tesla is on track to reap as much as $65 million in SGIP rebates.”

Indeed, one has to wonder if Musk hatches business strategies specifically because they are government subsidized. More importantly, when will all this munificence end? Taxpayers are still funding EVs with seemingly no end in sight.

Even if you believe the initial funding of Tesla has been in the public good, one still needs to ask: are we ever going to stop subsidizing Musk’s paean to the rich and selfrighteous?

And, if not now, when? Is there a due date on Musk’s promise that someday everyone will be driving electric?

Or is this a blank cheque and Tesla is welcome to suck at the government teat forever?

What’s particularly galling about Tesla’s avarice is that the company is still — somehow — losing money.

While Musk was breathlessly bragging about his new power-station business, Tesla reported it lost $154 million (all figures US) in the first quarter of 2015.

How is that even possible? How does a company so lavishly subsidized lose the equivalent of $600 million a year? Or, more pointedly, how can that very same company still be the darling of Wall Street, Tesla’s stock still hovering around $240 a share?

Even more interesting — to me, at least — is the hypocrisy of the investors feeding this frenzy. Let’s be honest here, a Tesla investor is much more likely to be left-leaning, Greenpeace-supporting and environmentally friendly than a right-wing, climate-change-denying Tea Partier, the company’s cause as important as its financials. Fair dinkum; it’s their money. But isn’t their other favourite windmill to tilt at the very corporate welfare bum that Tesla has become?

^^
Someone got a big check from the oil and gas lobby to write that drivel.

http://www.pressdisplay.com/pressdisplay/iphone/homepage.aspx#_articleview?issue=14962015051500000000001001[HTML_REMOVED]page=92[HTML_REMOVED]article=941909804[HTML_REMOVED]previewmode=2[HTML_REMOVED]noredirect=false

This one?

The writer seems a little too focused on the bottom line while not giving a shit about supporting developers of new and useful technology. He also seems to think Rome was built in a day.

Looks the same. Must be a similar newspaper/tabloid as The Province.

^^
Someone got a big check from the oil and gas lobby to write that drivel.

Whats the difference between a car being tax payer funded or the car company(s) beings floated by taxation..

Answer: It doesnt matter /the rock

I'm looking to get a set of heads for my truck that I can get sent out to get rebuilt. Then throw in some cams and a new exhaust and the old supercharged x might start to snort pretty good.

I'm looking to get a set of heads for my truck that I can get sent out to get rebuilt. Then throw in some cams and a new exhaust and the old supercharged x might start to snort pretty good.

Lipstick on a pig.