re: Weekly Stock Market Plays/Thoughts - March/April

I was one of the bears early on and was initially of the train of thought of well they're dead when the big boys enter the space. Then after tons and tons of research and reading, I've come to the conclusion the big boys simply cannot compete anytime soon.
The thing is, if you look at the Chevy Bolt, they're already discounting it for starters, up to $5k off

LINK

Meanwhile Tesla has people putting $1k deposits multiple years in advance, says alot about demand. Then you look at GM, they had to make that deal with LG to buy the batteries, like Tesla did with panasonic, well LG could only supply 3 GWH annually, which in the scope of things is nominal, potentially 30-50k bolts at most. Meanwhile Tesla gigafactory will soon be making more batteries than the whole world put together.

I think the big thing is BEV's require minimal service, so the profits are made on initial sales which means those with the cheapest batteries will win. Right now Tesla is below the $145 kw/hr that GM is paying for the bolt and Elon said they will be sub $100 kw/hr soon which is a huge advantage. The current car business model as evidence by Mercedes with $140B in sales and $8B net profit is to sell cars to a franchisee who profits and then when cars come back for service, the big company profits selling parts. Well what happens when electric cars like a Tesla have 18 moving parts and not much breaks? Then when it does break, Tesla has a monopoly on service? The fact of the matter is big auto has too much invested in the ICE and with that much inertia going one way, its going to be tough to focus on BEV production.

Then we can look further into the future, the tesla supercharging network is all over the world, its really incredible, GM doesn't even have 1 out there. So you buy a Tesla you can drive New York to Los Angeles free of charge stopping at Tesla superchargers and filling up for free. If you had a bolt you couldn't make that trip for free and would have to find random charging stations all over the country if they even exist. I think Long term these tesla charging stations turn into refilling networks that charge non teslas.

Again the auto market is 80m cars/year now, tesla just sold 88,000. They sold more $100k cars than any brand last year, if you, like me think well if the $100k cars are selling, then surely the $30-50k cars will too. If you believe that you have to believe in lots of growth long term and at very high margins. The books are ugly now but thats bc of how much they're investing back into the company.

Musk himself said the energy business would grow faster than cars, and now solar roof orders begin next month. He says $1 trillion market cap one day, its at $40B now, even with 100% dilution thats still 12x your money, and maybe more if they can control dilution which the recent secondary showed they could. It's easy to be a bear, but thats my thesis on why its going much higher.