Letters: No free money for Tesla

Re “Tesla drives state credits to the bank,” May 6

Tesla Motors is an example of an innovative, homegrown California industry. It is building ultra-clean cars and providing employment for 2,800 people in a formerly abandoned car factory.

This success is not being subsidized by other car companies. Car manufacturers are not required to purchase credits (which Tesla can sell to its competitors), nor does the state’s Air Resources Board establish a price. The credits are entirely an opportunity to provide additional flexibility to car manufacturers to comply with a program whose ultimate goal is to support the commercialization of cutting-edge clean technology vehicles, and ensure that we get as many of them as possible on our roads and highways as fast as possible.

And we are succeeding: The uptake rate for electric cars is three times that of hybrid cars when they first appeared 10 years ago. The ultimate winners are the people of California.

Mary D. Nichols

Sacramento

The writer chairs the California Air Resources Board.

Tesla and its founder, Elon Musk, are takers of corporate welfare. Musk is rich, and he’s making expensive electric cars that only rich people can afford. He took a loan of hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government, and now California gives him pollution credits that he can sell to his competitors.

Stop the welfare to electric car makers and owners.

Robert Bubnovich

Irvine

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