One of the advantages of being plugged into the climate lobby is that loads of people are looking at reams of stuff and are tracking stuff too.
Back in Feb 2019, just before the shorts tried to push Tesla shares (prior to the 5 way split) under $180 and bankrupt Musk, CleanTechnica published an article challenging the accepted wisdom that the incumbent auto manufacturers would simply retool and crush Tesla; making Tesla a good investment rather than the disaster that some pressure groups were presenting.
https://cleantechnica.com/2019/02/25/th ... -industry/The article talks about the Osborne effect and also a triple whammy including the S curve of technological change.
It is an interesting, highly technical, but very hard hitting article.
What is more apt, is that it was written in February 2019. The author had no clue that the pandemic was coming that the chip shortage was coming, the author presented a theoretical model (well three of them), with an eventual conclusion.
Two examples were given for the S curve. The first was the iPhone, perhaps not so relevant, but an indicator of the way this works. This is well within living memory and people should be able to remember what it did.
The second is beyond most living memory but is well within our recent history. It is the story of the automobile and how it transitioned transport.
In 1900, almost all city and short haul transport was by foot, by cycle or horse and carriage. By 1910 it was almost entirely automobile, there was an incredibly massive change. Also remember that fuel refineries didn't exist, fuel stations didn't exist and range of a vehicle was not much more than 100 miles.
To recap a bit.
Musk doesn't take an income, he borrows money with his shares as collateral, making him quite susceptible to attempts to force the share price down below the redemption level and force him to sell all his shares, or at least enough to make sure he was no longer the major shareholder.
These TeslaQ, Q in the stock market denotes a company on the path to bankruptcy, went to great lengths to promote ther position even falsifying data on private websites.
So, anyway, this article was created 4 months before Tesla shares (before the 5 way split), we're driven down to under $200, perilously close to the level at which Musk would have had to pay back his borrowings and lose most of his stock in Tesla.
It predicted a massive shift to EV by 2025. It predicted that Tesla (struggling to produce 250,000 vehicles in 2018), would produce and sell half a million EV's in 2020 and 750,000 in 2021.
TESLAQ howled with laughter, told everyone that the factory in Shanghai they had recently broken ground on would be a mud field when Tesla went bankrupt.
Roll forward nearly 3 years and we see the S curve is in full swing. Tesla produced their 500,000 vehicles in 2020, then produced just short of 1m vehicles in 2021. This is in a pandemic and with a crippling chip shortage.
Tesla completed Shanghai in 2019, expanded it to twice the size in 2020 and it had a production run rate of 850,000 vehicles a year in December 2021.
At the same time Tesla built and brought close to completion two more factories, even larger than the doubled Shanghai, by the end of 2021.
Much more importantly VW has decided that it is compete or die. They have claimed they are "all in" on EV, but their timeliness and factory transitions speak otherwise. VW is working on their own S curve but that won't work, they do not live in a vacuum.
Several pointers have already been hit in 2021. 10% EV penetration in the vehicle market with over 4% Battery EV (BEV). Bloomberg estimated 11% BEV by 2025 but they are growing at well over 50%.
Wait times are up to a year for EV and orders are growing month on month. VW EV capacity, globally, is fully sold out for 2022. Tesla is sold out for 6 months but Tesla capacity is several times VW and about to double again.
Chinese EV manufacturers who nearly went under in 2019-2022, are getting out of the rut, growing production and are hoovering up pent up demand which cannot be supplied elsewhere.
2025 will arrive in 2 short years. By that time Tesla should have over 3m vehicle capacity annually and be working on 4 more production units. Either whole new sites or expansion of Berlin and Texas plus one or two more new locations.
There is a paradigm shift going on in our world and most people are unaware of it. Automotive manufacturing employs tens of millions of people around the world when you factor in the supply industries.
Today the perception of EV amongst most mature adults is something like a souped up golf cart which doesn't burn fuel and doesn't go very far.
As these vehicles begin to flood the market, break into the taxi market, flood the car hire market (Hettz is ordering 100,000 Tesla model 3), people's experience and expectations are going to change and demand is going to skyrocket.
Yes there will be horror stories on the way of people who find it hard to plan their charging journey. That being said, demand for charging Infrastructure is going to have a darwinian effect on suppliers. Get a bad name for charging point availability and you are going to go bankrupt as hundreds of startups vie for business with the exploding EV charge market.
Many people I see post on a daily basis think it will be a done deal by 2025 with demand for new fossil burners dropping like diesel is today.
Whilst I have my doubts about 2 years from now, I do believe 2030 will see the clear and present demise of the mass market fossil fuelled vehicles and the rise of the cheap second hand EV with good viable years left in the battery.
Today, in the UK, the most popular fleet vehicle is EV. Fleet is half the second hand market. Meaning when supply meets demand in 2025 or so, by 3 years from then the market will be flooded with ex fleet second hand EV.
Back to Tesla stock price. After the 5 way split, the stock is worth around $1,000. Or $5,000 at the time of the TeslaQ push to bankrupt Musk.
Those analysts which pushed Tesla stock that high knew what they were doing. Tesla has a target of 20m vehicles per year by 2030. To put that into context, that is BOTH Toyota and VW group combined and will be 20% of the market at that time.
At that size, revenue alone would make Tesla the largest company in the world.
In order to stop Tesla doing that, every vehicle manufacturer in the world will have to about face, transition to EV fully and COMPETE.
Meaning your fossil burner becomes just a fossil.
Not to mention the fact that Tesla is a massive player in the solar market, the largest player in grid storage and grid storage software, one of the largest players in home electrical power storage.
Then, of course, there is the self driving AI which has already drawn level with Waymo and is about to overtake it and also the robot Tesla is going to create, driven by the self driving AI software, which will replace humans in manufacturing and supply chain logistics.
As a side note, Tesla is creating its ow insurance division which will expand to 8 US states this year. Tesla knows how people drive their cars and your insurance varies each month based on your safety score.
Tesla isn't going bust and now has the money to take the vehicle market by storm. They have set a target of average 50% production growth annually to 2030, which brings them to 20m vehicles. They are exceeding that target.
The only possible defence for the incumbent auto manufacturers is the S curve. All out attack on their core market, EV's. The only free slot is the mass market hatchback which Tesla has left open.
Our world is changing.
Wnjoy!