
Tesla’s Stock Keeps Going Up - feross
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-07-07/tesla-s-stock-keeps-going-up
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woodandsteel
Tesla's price seems crazy, but it's not. In the coming few years the market
for ev's is going to skyrocket, and the market for ice's is going to start to
collapse.

There are several reasons this will happen. For one, global climate change
will continue to get worse, so governments are going to keep pushing harder
promoting ev's. Secondly, the number of available public charging stations is
going to continue to go up. Thirdly people will become more familiar with ev's
and realize a lot the ideas about them they have been fed by ice promoters are
false.

Finally there is cost. Ev's are already cheaper in overall operating expense.
In the next few years falling battery prices will start to make them as cheap
in sticker price.

So there is a technological revolution coming. In the last year or so many of
the legacy auto manufacturers have realize this, and have gone into high gear
working on ev's. A flood of new models is coming onto the market.

The problem is demand is going to outrun production for many years, partly due
to battery shortages, and so the companies like Tesla that have lots of ev
production place are going to prosper, and those that don't are going to go
out of business.

Beyond that, Tesla is also in solar and energy storage, and it is about to get
into li-ion cell production. Now there is no way to be sure how things are
going to go, but Tesla is clearly one of the companies to bet on.

~~~
0xy
Toyota is a vastly superior manufacturer in every conceivable manner. Why do
you think Tesla will be able to take on the rest of the industry with inferior
manufacturing?

Even if what you say about EVs is true, Toyota will be able to manufacture
them faster, safer and cheaper. As will some other manufacturers.

I also don't see how being in a commodity race-to-the-bottom industry like
batteries and solar will help them.

~~~
woodandsteel
History shows again and again that where there is a major technological
transformation in an industry, some or all of the incumbents fail to make the
change, and some of the major powers afterwards are new companies.

Also, Tesla is getting pretty good at manufacturing, and steadily getting
better. It is turning out many more cars than it did a few years ago, and has
good profit margins. It has also learned to build factories and get them into
production much faster than any of the old companies can.

And no, it is not a commodity race-to-the-bottom when the technology is
continually improving at a rapid pace. Someday it will be, but that is decades
from now.

So instead of trying to figure out why Toyota will clobber Tesla, you should
be trying to guess which companies today are doing a good job of positioning
themselves for the big change, and which are not. Among the old companies, VW
is doing a great job, Toyota is so far so-so.

You know, that sort of "we are the biggest so we can't fail" mentality is the
key reason companies fail to make big technology transitions.

