Both in number of vehicles sold[1] and in distance driven[2] Tesla vehicles are handily beat by the likes of the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf. Those are the sorts of vehicles that are going to change the game and make a dent in climate change, not luxury cars.
1. https://insideevs.com/plug-in-electric-car-sales-ranked-by-o...
2. https://insideevs.com/us-crosses-10-billion-e-miles-driven-f...
I know we've talked about this before. But +100MW-hrs here and there is nothing. Yeah, 300MW in Australia is impressive for Lithium Ion. But...
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/07/24/business/ener...
This singular $3 Billion project will give 2GW of power. If the lake holds 8-hours of water, that'd be 16-GW-hrs of energy in a single project.
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If energy storage is to be figured out in the USA, we need to be calculating GW-hr scale projects, not MW-hr scale projects like Mr. Musk.
Lithium Ion's main benefit was to Tesla, as Tesla would have a 2nd place to sell their Lithium Ion batteries. Its great for Tesla, but its way too small of a scale for me to consider it as a major solution to the USA's energy problem.
Utility scale battery storage will lead the day. Raw materials go into your factory, out come battteries good for at least a decade, that can perform energy arbitrage and frequency response for grid services. And every year it keeps getting cheaper to build. Hydro storage construction is always going to be geoconstrained, time consuming to construct, and expensive.
Just my two cents.
Frankly, Q3 2018 was shaping up to be a big moment where M3 cars were mass produced and selling well. If Mr. Musk just shut up for the past 6 months and never tweeted anything, then Tesla would be in a far stronger position.
Today: Musk has to deal with the pedophile slander lawsuit, the SEC investigation, and now the DoJ investigation. The shorts did NONE of this, it was all Mr. Musk's mistake. If Mr. Musk sat tight, released the (what seem to be) good Q3 2018 numbers, then the shorts would have been busted naturally.
That's how you "beat the shorts". Have a strong quarter, have a strong year, and push the stock price up. Short sellers lose money every time the stock rises.
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And I'm sure people out there will complain about the 2-billion convertible loan due 2019, and how short-sellers are destroying the $360 price point.
Guess what? The CEO's job is to secure funding. It was Mr. Musk who signed Tesla to that deal. If you think the loan was idiotic, then it was Mr. Musk's fault for signing the loan back in 2014.
That's Musk's decision however. He's had 5 years to make a profit on a 5-year loan with 0.25% coupon (!!!) and that's his own darn fault for not keeping track of it and turning a profit in time.
(Frankly: 0.25% loan for 5-years are stupendous terms. I do think it was good way to raise money)
Details on the loan due March 2019: http://finra-markets.morningstar.com/BondCenter/BondDetail.j...
The terms of this loan are: $360 call option or cash back on March 2019. Which means bondholders can buy the stock at $360 (no matter what price TSLA is at), OR can demand cash back instead. Given the current price of TSLA, it seems like the bondholders will ask for Cash.
But Musk clearly though, way back in 2014 when he signed this deal, that he would raise the stock price to $360 to avoid paying back the loan. OR he was fine with a 0.25% coupon (!!) on a 5-year rate. Anyone who follows finances knows that this bond was an incredible deal to the advantage of Tesla, and no one should be touting this loan as a disadvantage.