If always means for two to five decades more, yes. Electricity doesn't need to come from the burning of fossil fuels, but it does dominate transportation and energy production until all the other alternative sources - including nuclear - starting taking the lion's share away from coal, natural gas, and oil.
Solar is the most promising long term considering how "clean" it is if we can get better battery technology and continue to develop more efficient cells. At least for personal home electricity generation purposes.
Thing is, every major auto maker can do similar cars cheaper and better.
In his defense, it looked like a no brainer to short. The numbers don't work, but then again, neither do Amazon's.
I do think it's going to take a hit sooner or later, when the hedge funds decide to kill it.
I feel like cities have got to be a less than ideal market.
I love the idea of a plugin, electric car... but who the fuck has a driveway in a city? it's very rare for me to drive more than 10-20 miles at a stretch (tbh, I could go without my car entirely if it wasn't for visiting friends/family who live further out in the suburbs, and just the convenience of being able to drive to big grocery stores/not be subservient to a train schedule), but my car is either parked in the street or in a municipal lot, not exactly convenient charging stops.
Batteries in general hate cold weather, not only do they not last as long but it shortens their life spans meaning more frequent expensive changes. Not to mention heating a car in winter is an easy thing with combustion engines.
Electric cars will definitely be a niche item in colder climates, as they'll be mostly a summer driver. I've only seen one Tesla here in Minneapolis. I remember clearly driving one lane over and a couple cars behind it, wondering what the heck kind of car it was. It wasn't until I got closer that I saw the T logo.
In his defense, it looked like a no brainer to short. The numbers don't work, but then again, neither do Amazon's.
I do think it's going to take a hit sooner or later, when the hedge funds decide to kill it.
Theoretically they could, but they aren't. Though Toyota does have a hydrogen car that's interesting enough, but Elon Musk thinks it's the wrong direction and basically (probably not literally) laughed at the idea.
It's like saying 5 years ago that BlackBerry could do what Apple did with the iPhone. Sure, they could have, but they let time and progress pass them by. Potential is nice, but the big investors want to see real products that will make it to market. The mainstream car manufacturers have been doing all sorts of expensive but cool prototypes for years. At least now there are some decent hybrids and a few all-electric vehicles from the likes of Toyota, Chevy, and Nissan and the others, but Tesla was leading the way with viable sports and luxury-class vehicles, which is generally where all the real advancements in technology occur and then make their way down into less expensive models.
Anyway, Tesla's current run looks like it started around October 26, 2012 (arbitrarily basing this on 100 week EMA). 17 or 18 months of this run would put the estimated peak around April 2014. Of course these are just rough approximations. Not all bubbles are the same. Other good times to crash are this October because third quarter earnings go to the end of September, and next January due to fourth quarter earnings, assuming people actually care about earnings, which is unlikely. Those dot com stocks had a strong run even though none of those companies reported positive earnings.
You can even predict what it will look like before it crashes. A lot of trading is now automated with computers, and calculated sell points are called trailing stops. It's called a trailing stop because the stop trails behind the rising stock price. As the stock price goes up, the trailing stop goes up. Rather than comparing current price to purchase price, a trailing stop compares current price against the peak price. If a price drops 10% or 20% from its peak, that's a sign of ending momentum, and computers will automatically sell the stock using a stop-loss order. In theory, Tesla's stock will eventually see a normal 10-20% decline then a cliff where it drops by a lot as billions of dollars of stock are all trying to be sold at the same time. Then it might have a dead cat bounce where it goes up a little more, followed by another decline.
Predicting the timing is tricky. I'm looking to see how long other bubbles have lasted. NASDAQ's dot com bubble looks like it started in October 1998, peaked in March 2000 (17 months rise). What's neat about looking at the NASDAQ is how the automated sell points jump out. Like clockwork, the index as a whole drops by a large amount as soon as the index dips ~10% below the most recent peak.
July 17, 1998 - 2008.8 peak
August 21, 1998 - 1797 (5 weeks to drop this first 11%)
August 28, 1998 - 1640 (1 week to drop this extra 9%)
March 10, 2000 - 5049 peak
April 7, 2000 - 4446 (4 weeks to drop this first 12%)
April 14, 2000 - 3321 (1 week to drop this extra 25%)
Anyway, Tesla's current run looks like it started around October 26, 2012 (arbitrarily basing this on 100 week EMA). 17 or 18 months of this run would put the estimated peak around April 2014. Of course these are just rough approximations. Not all bubbles are the same. Other good times to crash are this October because third quarter earnings go to the end of September, and next January due to fourth quarter earnings, assuming people actually care about earnings, which is unlikely. Those dot com stocks had a strong run even though none of those companies reported positive earnings.
Stay out of investing for your own sake. Comparing Tesla to McDonalds in your OP and now the dotcom boom, assinine.
Yep, on a very basic level, charts show where a price has been, not where they're going.
There are some fairly accurate indicators, but they show up after a stock starts a run up or down.
For instance, Amazon is massively overbought if you use traditional metrics, problem is it's been overbought for years now.
Theoretically they could, but they aren't.
Stay out of investing for your own sake. Comparing Tesla to McDonalds in your OP and now the dotcom boom, assinine.
if the electric car is to work we need a breakthrough in electric storage. Present day batteries are horrendously inefficient to charge / discharge. And are always in a state of decay.
This got me thinking...How well would they perform in cold/freezing climates? Aren't lithium batteries notoriously awful in cold temperatures?
Or am I think of the wrong battery chemistry, or perhaps Tesla has somehow designed these batteries without such flaws?
if the electric car is to work we need a breakthrough in electric storage. Present day batteries are horrendously inefficient to charge / discharge. And are always in a state of decay.
I don't see future batteries address this issue and I simply don't see Electric cars as the future.....
I don't see future batteries address this issue and I simply don't see Electric cars as the future.....
Then you're blind. Batteries that fix the issue of charge rate limits and expense will skyrocket sales of electric vehicles.
They have advantages across the board over gas powered vehicles
BFD. They can't produce them fast enough, so they can't sell them fast enough. Even if they could, the vast majority of the country is not going to drop that kind of cash on a car. If they release a product in the 30-40k range, they'll do a lot better and probably start turning a consistent and continually increasing profit.
I think I'd rather have more range at the expense of fast charging. A 500-mile battery is nearly 8 hours of driving at 65 MPH, which covers a lot of round-trips, cross-country trips, cold-weather range loss (even if it gets cut in half in winter, that's still 250 miles, which is equivalent to a lot of gas car's ranges), and goosing it (which will definitely cut down on range). Then just plug it in to charge overnight. Even if it takes 8 hours to charge, I'll be asleep during that time...I'd rather have that than have to stop somewhere to charge up, even if it's pretty quick.
What they need is a standardized battery pack that can be plugged in AND swapped. Otherwise, I don't see electrics being universal. Eight hours is a long ass drive, but I've done over 500 km in a day (stupid job...) over 10 hours, cops/emergency services might need even longer range. It takes a minute or two to top up a gas car (assuming you have a canteen in the back) if the shit hits the fan. Standardized battery + charging stations with exchangeable batteries = all set.
Heavy as hell though...