I am one of those who gladly read negative articles about Tesla, to see if I`m missing something. And I agree that Peterson is smart. However, I find many of his articles so biased that they seem like worthless Tesla bashing. It`s okay to disagree, but not to dismiss all positive aspects of a company.
And let`s make one thing clear; top CEOs and CFOs have no crystal ball, and are often unable to see what`s happening before it`s too late. That`s why small companies can become successfull, and big companies fail. I`ve studied innovation for three years, and one of the most important lessons I`ve learned is that management often fail to see fundamental changes, or underestimate them. I know Clayton Christensen disagrees that Tesla is disruptive, but I find Tesla disruptive in many ways.
Take a look at Kodak, Nokia, Microsoft, Blockbuster +++.
Ha, Ha: I wrote an article more than a year ago saying the exact same thing: Tesla is disruptive not in the sense of Christensen, but as Apple was with the iPhone - disruption from the top end! Here is a link:
Apple And Tesla Motors: Serial Disruptors - Seeking Alpha
Note that Christensen considers the iPhone as a disruptor of computers (cheaper - also a reason he could not foresee the tsunami in 2007 / 2008 - I respectfully disagree), but I see it as almost creating a new market (the smartphone market was less than 10% of what it is now in 2007)
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Welcome Nico. I really would be curious about his reasoning. Did you find out anything?
His articles come across as biased and often dismissive of Tesla using cutting jibes.
He raises some good points, but he never seems to consider the positives as a counterweight.
He also seems to have a bias towards his own investments, I don't think he can be objective.
He is more of a utility guy. And he thinks at global scale. And he is right that non-ferrous metals used in the batteries (not to count the aluminum frame, did you know we are consuming 10x the energy to make 1 kg of Aluminum compared to steel? do you know how toxic is the pollution in places where bauxite is processed to obtain Aluminum?) are extracted in quantities that are 0.1% to 1% compared to oil. And they have to be processed (energy intensive), much more than oil.
Of course, you may say that those metals get recycled (not so true unfortunately - I have checked Umicore claims and independent research for what % of metals are recycled globally) and are not used every time you "fill up" your Model S. But they are in some sense, as the battery has a limited number of cycles. One may say that this is crazy, how can 1 in 1000 fill-ups consume that much? A simple way to see that is that you probably pay $500 / kWh of battery capacity (more for the Leaf / Volt - probably a bit less for P85 - it's just an example to illustrate scales). This gets cycled (at full) at most 1000 times (more than 250k miles with your P85 before replacing the battery). That amounts to about 50c per kWh stored that you probably buy for 5c to 15c. Shocking?
Would you buy a 15c coke that is stored in a $500 reusable bottle?
Oil is expensive and became a geopolitical problem because it is so easy to extract, use and transport and packs a lot of energy / kg (that's why we developed from around 1B people in 1900 to over 7B now - without oil more than half of us would not exist - the final reason for depletion of many other natural resources too). If EVs scale up with present tech, metal prices will soar dramatically. And the mining industry moves at a glacial speed compared to the oil industry. They will not be able to scale up nowhere near fast enough. Mining is also much dirtier and eco-system destroying than oil extraction (search for pictures from an usual mining site).
As for the cost reducing in Li-ion batteries, most of them have been realized during the last two decades. A rule of thumb is that you decrease price by around 20% every time you double production. Billions of laptops have been sold, each packing several 18650 cells. As for new chemistries that do wonders in the lab, 95% of them die before an industrial grade working prototype. And from there to mass commercialization, you have to count 5 to 10 years. I have been watching this space for at least 10 years, long before I bought my first share. And I was always wondering why we read every other week about a breakthrough battery discovery, but when you look back, it's only a very very slow specs improvement and price reduction. Now I know why mostly thanks to John and his articles.
I think Tesla will be successful in the short term because they are super-engineers and have a sleek and stylish product. But frankly, with today's tech, Model S and even Gen III cannot dominate the personal transportation market. We truly need new chemistries, that pack more energy / power for the buck, less metals (more carbon, silicon etc. - but not nano tech, we are not going to mass produce nano tech anytime soon). So I remain cautiously optimistic and I know we have to start somewhere, even if today's tech is not good enough - more demand will bring more money and interest to develop both clean transportation and energy production - we have made one step in a 1000 miles journey. On the other side, John has a more static view, he cannot believe that during one decade enough things will improve to make this work at a global scale.
(sorry for the typos, I hope Brian H is not around lol)
