The Tesla story is fascinating. Whether you love the company or hate it, it is easy to get pulled into the story like you’re pulled into a good movie. This is surely one reason so many people so obsessively check for Tesla news and op-eds every day.
As I disclose in my bio, I do own some Tesla stock in one of my investment trusts. I own the stock because I believe the company is a promising avenue of speculation, with a lot of risk and a lot of potential reward.
I reported 11 days ago that the Tesla Model 3 was the best selling electric car in the world in 2018 (special thanks to Jose Pontes and EV Volumes for the data). What the data also showed, which I didn’t specifically highlight, is that the Tesla Model 3 became the first passenger electric vehicle to cross 100,000 sales in a single year. At 145,846 sales, the car actually crushed that milestone.
I published an article early this morning about a potential partnership between GM and Tesla in which GM would build electric trucks using Tesla powertrains. Tesla denied such a partnership and GM declined to comment on the story.
With back-to-back profitable quarters under its belt, Tesla is kicking off 2019 with an emphasis on financial discipline. As Engadget reports, “Tesla’s 2018 fourth-quarter results showed the company still made a profit ($139.5 million), but it was smaller than that of the third quarter ($311.5 million). For the quarter, the company posted $7.23 billion in revenue. Last year’s revenue was $3.29 billion. Overall for 2018 it reported $21.4 billion in revenue.”
Tesla won’t see its sales plummet in 2019. Quite the opposite. It’s very easy to see that demand will only increase in the USA and globally through 2019.
Good news, bad news for Tesla yesterday. China says it may soon lift the 40% tariff it imposed on cars imported from the US, and a judge in Connecticut has ruled the company is illegally selling cars at its store in Connecticut.
There’s a lot of excitement in the electric vehicle world these days. Tesla has come along and shown that you can produce a mass-market electric car that ranks #1 in its class (by far) and even ranks in the top 5 of all car models. This has created excitement about new frontiers — electric crossovers, electric pickup trucks, electric semi trucks, etc.
Elon Musk has a lot to say to Kara Swisher of Recode recently. Two topics that stood out were the Tesla pickup truck and the financial prospects for Ford.
Tesla is moving its earnings call from the beginning of November to Wednesday, October 24. This is going to be a historic earnings call for Tesla for multiple reasons. During last quarter’s earnings call, CleanTechnica got the chance to ask some questions as well. While there is no guarantee that we will get that chance again, we are hopeful and this time we have been preparing.
