If the next generation of Teslas turns out to be a line of hovercrafts, I’ll have to retract this post.

[I was going to open this post with a brief discussion of concerns with treating the pandemic as a natural experiment, but I have stat professors who read this and they can be picky as hell.]

I read the whole thing and was surprised to find zero references to the 19 pending Clean Air Act violations at Tesla's Fremont plant https://t.co/QWTph1Af03

— E.W. Niedermeyer (@Tweetermeyer) June 10, 2020

Despite Elon Musk‘s suggestion I did not read the whole thing, but I did spot one interesting bit of slight of hand.









While the engineering behind diesel engines is really cool (especially the reason they don’t need spark plugs), they do have a problem with particulate pollution. There is, of course, clean diesel technology but the pros and cons there are probably better handled by experts. Besides, it’s not all that relevant to our central point.

With standard gasoline powered cars, however, the kind most of us drive, you start looking at tires and brake pads as major sources of particulate pollution. While Teslas do have a better carbon footprint than internal combustion cars, they are hardly green technology in this respect.

By the standards of Musk and Tesla, this isn't a big deal, but it is part of a pattern. Tesla frequently suggests that its success is interchangeable with the future of EVs, or that the company has plans to solve all of the problems associated with cars.