Into the breach once more…

BEWARE: Tesla post!

I promised a while back I’d try not to post so much about Tesla and the electric vehicles. It felt, to me anyway, that I’d written quite enough about my feelings regarding electric vehicles in general (I love the concept of EV cars and feel combustion engines are an environmentally dirty, very old concept that is way past its time to be replaced) and my Tesla 3 in particular (still loving it!).

The past few weeks for Tesla have been, to say the least, a roller coaster. Their stock prices have tanked for several weeks and those who are salivating at the prospect of Tesla floundering (or, perhaps more specifically, of Elon Musk failing) were ecstatic.

I know little about stocks, other than they go up and down, but I’ve heard of the so-called Tesla short-sellers, people whose investments are a bet the company will fail, and I’ve also read things Musk himself has written/said noting that Tesla and its cars are a direct threat to some very big industries.

Regarding the later, he’s quite right. If Tesla -or EV vehicles in general- become the norm, the several billion dollar auto industry and its many ancillary industries will change in drastic ways. Starting with the oil industry, there will be no great need for gasoline. I wouldn’t say gasoline will suddenly, completely disappear, but the fact is that a sizable portion of the sales will dry up.

Secondary markets will also be affected: Gas stations, oil changing companies (whether on gas station grounds or individual businesses), battery companies (those that create batteries for the gas powered cars), transmission fluid makers, parts manufacturers, etc. etc. etc.

Truly, if EV cars become the norm, which I strongly suspect will happen, many, many industries will be subverted. Many may well go under.

So there were those -investors, industry, Elon Musk haters, etc.- who were very happy to pile on to the company’s woes following a weak first quarter of sales.

The tables, though, seem to have turned. From Lauren Feiner at cnbc:

Tesla had its second best day this week following report its offering hefty incentives to reach high delivery

CNBC, a business reporting company, is, at least according to this article by Zachary Shahan at cleantechnica.com, not necessarily a reporting organization that offers many positives regarding Tesla…

40 Tesla headlines on CNBC in 2 days -31 negative, 2 positive

It’s tempting, as a fan of my Model 3 and EVs in general, to say the sudden about face and turn from negative to positive will mean from here on out things are going to be good.

Not so.

Just as we had a period of dark news and now we’re moving into positives, I suspect at some point in the near future there will be more negative news coming regarding Tesla and EVs.

I suppose the point is the old cliche of a marathon.

It’s a long race and Tesla may be, for the moment, ahead of the game when just a few days before they were falling behind and things looked very dark. This could very easily change in the near future.

We’ll see.