Tesla Motors in talks with German Government - Elon talks to Sigmar, Berlin Sept.24th

[Lessmog]

I agree with most of you post, but I don´t find it o.k. to talk about a senior representative of another country like that on an international forum like TMC. I believe you were thinking that, and Mr. Gabriel is not an intellectual match to Elon (then again, who is?) - but sometimes it is better not posting all you think. Not worth more of a discussion though.

Well put, and diplomatic too.
Forgot to add in my reputation star: Big thanks for your news watch from the German horizon over the last week or so! That has been invaluable.

 

[Drax7]

At Hobbes, should we buy daimler benz for a bounce.

 

[Electroman]

I agree with most of you post, but I don´t find it o.k. to talk about a senior representative of another country like that on an international forum like TMC. I believe you were thinking that, and Mr. Gabriel is not an intellectual match to Elon (then again, who is?) - but sometimes it is better not posting all you think. Not worth more of a discussion though.

+1

The German minister obviously mis-understood what Elon said. He presumed Elon is favouring incentives for financial industry to nudge them to fund renewable energy. That is not what he said, and Elon clarified it many times during this session that govt role is to make sure that doing business that has a high carbon foot-print becomes cost prohibitive, and then fund managers will move their investment to renewables and away from fossil fuels. But I am not sure if the minister really listened to Elon's clarification.

Elon also repeated a few times that incentives to EVs or renewables is not the right thing to do, but effort should be directed towards taxing the CO2 polluters. That will do more good to EVs than any incentives you can think of

 

[JER]

I'm still struggling to understand how anything Elon said could be construed as advocating tax breaks for investment bankers.

 

[The Blue Owl]

I'm still struggling to understand how anything Elon said could be construed as advocating tax breaks for investment bankers.

Maybe he hears whining like that all the time from the financial moguls of his land and he responded reflexively, before actually parsing Elon's words.

 

[hobbes]

I'm still struggling to understand how anything Elon said could be construed as advocating tax breaks for investment bankers.

The original question from the audience stated that there was billions that investment bankers didn´t know where to put and how one could direct those funds towards the EV industry. Probably Gabriel sensed a chance to score points with the audience exploiting the fact that investment bankers are not so popular and awkwardly twisted it so he could make that point. Probably nothing to do with anythin Elon said really.

 

[JER]

The original question from the audience stated that there was billions that investment bankers didn´t know where to put...

The potential growth of carbon neutral energy businesses once price signalling for carbon is fixed sounds just like the kind of opportunity they're looking for.

Probably Gabriel sensed a chance to score points with the audience exploiting the fact that investment bankers are not so popular and awkwardly twisted it so he could make that point. Probably nothing to do with anythin Elon said really.

Well, that makes sense. It seems I was mistaken with one of my earlier pejoratives; does "predatory beguiler" fit better?

Actually, "politician" probably works...

 

[StephenM]

Hmm. I didn't get the sense that there was any ill-will from either Elon or the minister. The minister seemed to genuinely respect Elon and wanted to hear his ideas, though he seemed to not understand his answer wrt carbon-taxing.

 

[pGo]

Just learnt: Sigmar Gabriel, state premier and Volkswagen board member between 1999 and 2003, is now economics minister and Ms. Merkel’s vice-chancellor.