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Elon's close relationship with Trump could boost Tesla Shares up 30%

2K views 22 replies 12 participants last post by  Simon Mac 
#1 ·
#4 ·
That would be thin ice to base a prediction on. There are more risks from the various members of his administration who are likely to make life more difficult for Tesla than a few pleasantries between Musk and Trump could counteract. Buying shares to hope for a quick gain is pure gambling in my view, but buying them because you believe in what they are trying to achieve and want to help enable it, is another. I think Tesla is worth investing in for the latter reasons, then it doesn't matter too much if the price goes up or down if you are happy to hold onto them for a reasonably long time.


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#13 ·
The best we can hope for is that Trump is stymied by the decades of regulation that went in the right direction (Bush era aside...slightly) and that it takes a long time to turn the juggernaut around; so much so that he sees reason (a.k.a dollars) and that he is persuaded by Elon and the like that the low carbon revolution makes jobs and money, and that's frankly all Trump cares about on a political and personal level.

Coal and oil are commodities and as such need to be traded on world markets. There are few coal power plants in Europe now, and Russia & China aren't exactly going to buy it given that they have their own, so it becomes totally uneconomical to extract.

Thankfully, money speaks sense in a language all nations understand, and the Trump administration is full of money hungry people.

Personally I would love to see Elon club together with some other billionaire friends of his and build that 100sq mile solar plant in the desert - if that can power the entire US, then there really is no need for fossil fuels.....
 
#15 ·
Ha! He binned the idea of hybrids a long time ago, and for good reason. If he goes down the ICE route, he basically undoes everything Tesla have achieved. Kind of like Apple deciding to install Android....
 
#17 ·
Ha! He binned the idea of hybrids a long time ago, and for good reason. If he goes down the ICE route, he basically undoes everything Tesla have achieved. Kind of like Apple deciding to install Android....
If you go back far enough in Tesla history the car that started it all had a towable ICE genset ;)

Even funnier was the April fools joke of a front mounted V8 phev engine on the design studio which backfired when people actually started ordering it :)

TBH a PHEV is a fairly pragmatic approach to widespread mass adoption in my view.

I get the distinct impression central EU/UK planners stance of lumping all ULEVs into a group, with closing parity in terms of perks makes me think at least here pure BEVs will face some headwinds.

While some will claim it is "big oil", I suspect it is as much about grid scalability, taxation ramifications, setting up OFCHARGE, monopoly concerns etc etc. IOW The stuff the bureaucrats worry about not what headline rhetoric politicians pronounce.

If this is the case Tesla's inability to pivot may do more harm than good for the EU market.
 
#18 ·
I'm not sure PHEV is the way forward; IF we can get battery costs down - you get all the nonsense associated with ICE vehicles, but with slightly better fuel economy. Getting people off oil is the obvious and logical way forward.

Nissan are building a battery plant in Sunderland and Dyson are spending £1bn on battery tech (according to The battery battle hots up - BBC News).

The grid has nothing to worry about, really, the drop off in oil refining should cut a huge amount of energy use, and since power plants won't come on and off load as often, then it should cost less to actually produce electricity.
 
#19 ·
@ebyard there is a reason oil refineries are built next door to power stations, and even if we could take every kWh of electrical oil refining usage and push it into EV's the problems don't end there :(

Even if the current HV parts of the grid could cope throw into that the mismatch between oil refineries 24/7 operation (and predictability of electrical demand) vs peaky usage of power EV's represent (especially those which are solely rapid charged for those with no off street parking). So you have both time and location mismatches between generation and usage.

You only have to look at the troubles Tesla are having finding SpC sites, which right now are supplying <0.1% of all
cars on the road.

Then we have the LV issues, substation diversity factors in areas of high EV uptake, cabling issues in rural and semi-rural settings, phase imbalance.....

While I'm sure these problems are not insurmountable, you start getting into the nitty gritty detail that Mr. Musk often glosses over (which is fine and expected as he is a" big picture" guy)

So PHEV's will continue to have a significant role to play in moving from where we are now, to where we may be in 2040, but just having batteries is not going to be enough. Significant infrastructure projects are needed, and while underway / in planning, are extensive and going to take decades.

When you have a few hours to kill reading stuff like this, gives you some more detail. Unfortunately it doesn't fit into simple soundbites :(

http://innovation.ukpowernetworks.c...eat Pump loads on network demand profiles.pdf

For me the most telling thing was last year's SMMT report, PHEV growth is by far and away the largest YoY sales growth area, and my view is this has in big part come from the taxation policies in the fleet market rather than the list price of the cars. IOW the government is pushing us to PHEV's in subtle ways as can be seen by the closing to parity of the BIK rates between PHEVs and BEVs.

So is it because they are supporting the "evil German ICE manufacturers" and "big oil", or is it because they know that they can't click their fingers and "the shining knight of Tesla" will at a stroke fix all the issues overnight....

I'm personally a subscriber to the latter thesis.
 
#20 ·
Then we have the LV issues, substation diversity factors in areas of high EV uptake, cabling issues in rural and semi-rural settings, phase imbalance.....

......

http://innovation.ukpowernetworks.c...eat Pump loads on network demand profiles.pdf
Actually, that report is remarkably positive - it suggests that EV usage only impacts the LV network and at worst (for the authors UKPN) brings forward slightly investments that would be needed for already-predicted growth in any case.

But that's the same calculation that we've repeated many times on SpeakEV and elsewhere - you really can turn most cars in the UK to EVs without major change to the electricity supply system, provided they can charge at home during the night.

I've still yet to see a convincing strategy for people without off-street parking; Tesla's vision that the cars will drive themselves away to charge elsewhere seems on the one hand rather unlikely, yet at the same time a whole lot more plausible than the alternatives often suggested (urban rapid charging plazas etc.).

For me the most telling thing was last year's SMMT report, PHEV growth is by far and away the largest YoY sales growth area, and my view is this has in big part come from the taxation policies in the fleet market rather than the list price of the cars. IOW the government is pushing us to PHEV's in subtle ways as can be seen by the closing to parity of the BIK rates between PHEVs and BEVs.

So is it because they are supporting the "evil German ICE manufacturers" and "big oil", or is it because they know that they can't click their fingers and "the shining knight of Tesla" will at a stroke fix all the issues overnight....
How about neither of the above, more like the usual political fudge of "it would be good to have a plan", "here is a plan", "therefore this plan is good".

I could believe that a switch to PHEVs could be the most cost-effective way of meeting some public policy goals, but that would need clear enunciation of the goals and correct design of incentives/regulations to achieve them. PHEVs might be a good way of improving urban air quality if BEVs are seen as unaffordable, but that needs the PHEVs to actually get plugged in and run on battery in urban areas. Currently we are subsidising PHEVs to run around on petrol, which is actually worse than building efficient pure-petrol cars.
 
#22 · (Edited)
@arg yes I was surprised how positive the report was, especially on the cost implications. This should be tempered that the sample size was small and the timescales out until 2025 before the expected take up really kicked in, with plenty of time to get work undertaken.

I'd also suggest owners that have been using Ecotricity or SpC's in lieu of home charging, because they have been free, have somewhat skewed the validity of this survey (in the same way we don't know how many PHEV's have just used petrol), so it should be taken with a pinch of salt.

What it does do is highlight the need for planning (which I completely agree with), and studies like this are interesting to see, and continuously undertaken.

I'm also 100% on side that PHEVs being subsidised and never plugged in is completely bonkers.

However for the BEV vs PHEV debate, I'm not convinced it's just as simple as a question of affordability.

An anecdotal example for me was just this weekend, where I had to make a trip that even in the 100D would have incurred a stop at an SpC, and after a late night flight frankly it was a case of CBA. So instead we just went in my mates diesel F-Pace. In effect I am picking and choosing the most convenient.

Would I 100% home charge a PHEV, and rapid charge on petrol, resounding yes (I sort of do anyway in a roundabout way). So for the next five years I suspect it would still suit _my_ needs better.

The irony is that 99% of the time I'm lugging round 75% more batteries than needed, which is also inefficient.. IF the Superchargers were better located I would take my Tesla more.

For me personally though the most indicative example was this: I employed well over 200 people, had Nissan come to my offices, do big presentations, offering free extended test drives, discounted employee rates etc. etc.. Despite many, many being 2 car households. Doing <50 mile commutes, all IT professionals that could afford it and cost savings on PCH paying for the car vs fuel... the uptake was zero :( (one guy eventually did buy a Zoe, and loves it btw).

Say to the same people they could have a PHEV on salary sacrifice, especially one of the premium brands, and all of a sudden it was an easy sell.
 
#23 ·
Hmm there was - they've basically all closed now though, haven't they? Only one I can think that is left might be Aberthaw at a push (and Milford Haven is hardly next door). Fawley & Grain both closed and gone.
....
Humber and Immingham

I don't think PHEVs are the way forward because they just don't fix the air pollution problems, merely reduce a portion of it. Going EV at least allows you to control emissions at source (or better, not generate any in the first place!).
They deliver huge gains in local air quality in cities if used as intended, i.e. where cars sit in their most polluting state not moving. Now policing the use of the EV portion of the drive system is a different matter, and we still have no legislation to back this up.
 
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