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This is it - the tipping point has finally arrived. This is a killer combination of rapidly falling prices in solar PV (thank you China/Kyoto protocol/Global w

This is it - the tipping point has finally arrived. This is a killer combination of rapidly falling prices in solar PV (thank you China/Kyoto protocol/Global warming), meeting the falling prices of Li-ion batteries (thank you astonishingly successful decade of laptops/smartphones/tablets), meets a cyclic economic boom (thank you GFC), meets rising gas prices (thank you OPEC/cheap oil/peak oil), meets anti-carbon incentives (thank you IPCC), meets autonomous cars (thank you Google), meets the development of nuclear fusion (thank you ITER) all combining into one massive tailwind for the one company just on the cusp of absolutely crushing it. It's a complete clusterfuck of fortune, falling costs, converging secondary technologies and economic forces concentrated in one company protected with monopoly pricing, akin to those found by Apple, Google, YouTube, Intel, Cisco, Microsoft, Facebook and many other tech giants. TSLA will go 10x within the next 20 years (or get bought out before it - unlikely) as it rides these convergent waves of progress. Please for the love of capitalism short the crap out of it and don't buy it! I need to get as much of this stock as cheap as possible over the next 2-3 years of savings :D - you'd be doing me a favour! Full disclosure: I have a significant amount of my net worth in TSLA stock and have done so on and off for 2 years (riding cycles for fun). I used to own AAPL - until relatively recently - whereupon I transferred all holdings to Google/Tesla. I may be exiting Google within the next 6 months due to rapid appreciation.

ZoFreX 14y ago
So why wasn't the 2 minute full charge time that Better Place unveiled several years ago the tipping point? This is an incremental development and nothing more.
ams6110 14y ago
You are smart enough to know the risks of having a significant fraction of your net worth in one asset, so I'll spare you the lecture there. Tipping point? No, I don't think so. It's progress, and it's good news, but 30 minutes to recharge is still a LONG time compared to the two minutes a petroleum-fueled vehicle takes, and the best of those can go several multiples of the Teslas range between fuelings.
- confluence 14y ago
  I'm obviously biased - so please take everything I state with a grain of salt. My tipping point is not a "singular moment" or "lightbulb" - but merely the slow agglomeration over the next decade of multiple convergent waves that just happen to put wind in the sails of the only company able to execute on this plan at this point in time. Diversification is overrated. When crises happen - all correlations go to one - everything goes down simultaneously. Also my returns are cut in half :D.
  - ams6110 14y ago
    Diversification is overrated Sorry you are just flat out wrong. But if you're OK with it, I'm OK with it.
- freehunter 14y ago
  On my morning commute, it's important that fueling be quick. I have to stop at a station and fill up, something I can't do at home. However, if I were in an EV, I could fill up at home, while I slept. It'd be fully charged when I got in to go to work. If I could charge 30 minutes to half at home, charging time is nearly insignificant. I would still love to see hydrogen cars instead. I think Honda has it right.
  - gusgordon 14y ago
    It turns out that, among other advantages for electric cars, they can carry more energy than hydrogen cars when you take the efficiency of transferring kinetic energy to the car into account. There was an interview with Elon Musk where he scoffed at the use of hydrogen and the use of fuel cells.
    - freehunter 14y ago
      The advantage of hydrogen lies in the speed of refueling, which is the main disadvantage of electric cars.
chucknelson 14y ago
How about diversification?
- confluence 14y ago
  Diversification doesn't work. It not only leaves your risk essentially the same in case of catastrophic market failure (see GFC/debt crisis - bonds are safe RIGHT?). It also cuts your returns in half and brings you down along with everyone else - and gives you a false sense of security - nothing is safe - not even shorting the world (end of the world/counter party/regulatory risks). As an investor you must think long and hard about the future/companies/investments make very few super high signal, super high impact trades/positions/companies that you know inside and out (financials/GDP winds etc). I'd rather invest in 20 companies I know inside and out than 500 mediocre ones that I know nothing about. But that's me - most people don't know anything and they SHOULD diversify. If you don't know anything - the best thing you could do is assume no better than random.
  - krenoten 14y ago
    You're ignoring local failure, the much much much more common occurrence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
    - confluence 14y ago
      Local failure is obviously much more common than catastrophic failure (although the latter does have a much greater impact). I like to think of it in terms of car crashes and catastrophes. Companies are represented by cars - I pick good cars, with good people driving them, surrounded by a safe environment and hope they don't crash - it's how risk works. Hurricanes destroy everyone - no matter how good the driver is - no exceptions. The whole point of investing is to make above and beyond the S&P 500 benchmark over the long term - and that requires taking concentrated risks where one must bet on the right drivers with the right cars in awesome environments (most critical) and watching the horizon warily for distant hurricanes (debt crisis/nuclear war/WWIII/currency devaluations/governmental collapse). I really can't do any more than that. It's a trade off obviously. I understand local failures quite well - I rely on my ability to make decisions to mitigate that risk and the fact that I'm still young (older people should not do this).

ZoFreX 14y ago

So why wasn't the 2 minute full charge time that Better Place unveiled several years ago the tipping point? This is an incremental development and nothing more.

ams6110 14y ago

You are smart enough to know the risks of having a significant fraction of your net worth in one asset, so I'll spare you the lecture there. Tipping point? No, I don't think so. It's progress, and it's good news, but 30 minutes to recharge is still a LONG time compared to the two minutes a petroleum-fueled vehicle takes, and the best of those can go several multiples of the Teslas range between fuelings.

confluence 14y ago
I'm obviously biased - so please take everything I state with a grain of salt. My tipping point is not a "singular moment" or "lightbulb" - but merely the slow agglomeration over the next decade of multiple convergent waves that just happen to put wind in the sails of the only company able to execute on this plan at this point in time. Diversification is overrated. When crises happen - all correlations go to one - everything goes down simultaneously. Also my returns are cut in half :D.
- ams6110 14y ago
  Diversification is overrated Sorry you are just flat out wrong. But if you're OK with it, I'm OK with it.
freehunter 14y ago
On my morning commute, it's important that fueling be quick. I have to stop at a station and fill up, something I can't do at home. However, if I were in an EV, I could fill up at home, while I slept. It'd be fully charged when I got in to go to work. If I could charge 30 minutes to half at home, charging time is nearly insignificant. I would still love to see hydrogen cars instead. I think Honda has it right.
- gusgordon 14y ago
  It turns out that, among other advantages for electric cars, they can carry more energy than hydrogen cars when you take the efficiency of transferring kinetic energy to the car into account. There was an interview with Elon Musk where he scoffed at the use of hydrogen and the use of fuel cells.
  - freehunter 14y ago
    The advantage of hydrogen lies in the speed of refueling, which is the main disadvantage of electric cars.

chucknelson 14y ago

How about diversification?

confluence 14y ago
Diversification doesn't work. It not only leaves your risk essentially the same in case of catastrophic market failure (see GFC/debt crisis - bonds are safe RIGHT?). It also cuts your returns in half and brings you down along with everyone else - and gives you a false sense of security - nothing is safe - not even shorting the world (end of the world/counter party/regulatory risks). As an investor you must think long and hard about the future/companies/investments make very few super high signal, super high impact trades/positions/companies that you know inside and out (financials/GDP winds etc). I'd rather invest in 20 companies I know inside and out than 500 mediocre ones that I know nothing about. But that's me - most people don't know anything and they SHOULD diversify. If you don't know anything - the best thing you could do is assume no better than random.
- krenoten 14y ago
  You're ignoring local failure, the much much much more common occurrence. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic
  - confluence 14y ago
    Local failure is obviously much more common than catastrophic failure (although the latter does have a much greater impact). I like to think of it in terms of car crashes and catastrophes. Companies are represented by cars - I pick good cars, with good people driving them, surrounded by a safe environment and hope they don't crash - it's how risk works. Hurricanes destroy everyone - no matter how good the driver is - no exceptions. The whole point of investing is to make above and beyond the S&P 500 benchmark over the long term - and that requires taking concentrated risks where one must bet on the right drivers with the right cars in awesome environments (most critical) and watching the horizon warily for distant hurricanes (debt crisis/nuclear war/WWIII/currency devaluations/governmental collapse). I really can't do any more than that. It's a trade off obviously. I understand local failures quite well - I rely on my ability to make decisions to mitigate that risk and the fact that I'm still young (older people should not do this).