This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.  ... falling oil prices cheaper gasoline seems like generally good news for car companies and encourage people encourage people to drive or perhaps to buy a new car ... and obviously a presciently in that the bigger vehicles but our business World Columnist Holman Jenkins says the story on the one comforting in particular that is not going to be helped by ... falling oil prices Coleman thanks for joining us who were ... with which it which company is on the losing end of this really ... amazing decline in oil prices ... been leads to less than a regular trade mark its share price is down twenty percent in the last month when signing is driving oil prices ... would drop of gasoline in some markets to below two dollars ... with defenders ... and on Wall Street sentiment ... used to lock tree cars ... the bottom is to buy it don't care ... certainly true ... but it is a long-term investment plan in which is investing billions of shareholder dollars ... in its political standing all depends on the premise is ... that all ... electric car for the mass market for consumers who really do care about gas prices and will play his current weren't buying it gets two dollars a gallon so this is actually a bigger threat to the company's this ... is also ... because ... it makes it harder for politicians to justify all the subsidies shovel ... it is only producing toys for rich people ... in home ... runs than any isn't a craftiness beginning to ... end the whole fashion statement value of it ... is also bought into stockings is a highly risky time for Tesla and its owner Neil amounts ... you mention all the subsidies and then there are ... state subsidies their federal subsidy is ... the ... the green energy economy if you will ... it has a lot of subsidies in various different areas ... if you take those out ... and Tesla working as a ... as a business based on as you said very wealthy people wanting to make a statement ... could this thing work without her subsidies critical to its success ... and because it ... a ... devoted following of fans who will pay top dollar ... it has ... limited use of voting on whether you can achieve sufficient scandal but those customers are not ... in any case as number ten months finances and had to go mainstream ... he sold the whole company and the cure to ... global warming and he's gathered in a lot of political support our local so it so I think you ... so far down the road that it is ... his plan to make this a mass market car and spend a lot of money doing so ... ok in the subsidies to be clear the declining price of oil doesn't as far as I know it doesn't directly affect the amount of ... his subsidies ready just maybe makes it ... politically more difficult to sustain the argument why we need them ... well yes there's the political ... initiative and investment returns ... only to doing it subsidizing a ... current target audience ... in the other thing is you know any consumer who wonder what Entrecard has been concern about the economics of the trade off the cost of operation ... gasoline powered car which has come down dramatically ... gasoline has fallen by half ... something really threatens the mass market potential electric car ... because of what is it is we are justified attended twenty thousand dollars more you have to pay for a similar vehicle ... as it lasted frankly I think that's the envoy questioned for people who may feel very virtuous driving this thing let the cat electricity being produced in a way that ... offends of ... the of the hardcore of the anticarbon movement ... if you're driving this car and you know ... Peter did a drug ... called driven by ... midyear I know ... in terms of the CIA to for me to let the car so far ... you had in the whole cost of producing the matter it all about the lifecycle ... tomorrow will cost the state that probably actually worse than it did ... in her car ... okay well and of course you can't really put a price that I'm not feeling good about ... your glamorous environmental Poser of ...
Business World Columnist Holman Jenkins Jr. on what plunging gas prices mean for Elon Musk’s high-end electric car and his political standing. Photo: Getty Images