Tesla Motors: The Moral Man's Victory for the Health of the Planet

New Update February 25, 2014

There will not be enough batteries to keep up with Tesla's demand for batteries. So Tesla will be building the biggest battery factory in the world. It is called a gigafactory, giga factory or giga-factory. So Tesla is no longer just a car company.

Morgan Stanley raised its target price of Tesla from $153 a share to $320 a share. This is similar to Amazon.com. It started out as a book company but now it sells everything.

Tesla is now a car company and a energy storage company. Who knows what they will get into next. Today Tesla stock closed at $248 a share. End of Update.

To take advantage of the growing need for lithium-ion batteries (Li-on batteries or LIB) see this article: How and Why to Invest in Lithium Stock. The battery in the Tesla Model S weighs over 1,000 pounds.

On Wednesday May 8, 2013, 10 year old Tesla Motors (TSLA) announced their first ever quarterly profits of $11 million. I wrote this article May 12, 2013.

On Thursday May 9, 2013 Consumer Reports gave it a near perfect score of 99-- the highest score given to a car. Note that gas-powered Porsche Panamera got a score of 84 and the Fisker Karma plug-in hybrid got a 57. CNN says:

"If it could recharge in any gas station in three minutes, this car would score about 110 [out of 100]," said Jake Fisher, head of auto testing for Consumer Reports. Fisher called the car's performance in the magazine's performance tests "off the charts."

It goes on to explain that a full charge takes 6 hours and gives you another 208 to 265 miles of driving. But the model S also has a super charge capacity. Currently Tesla has 9 superchargers or supercharger stations in North America. They are working on putting these supercharger stations all across the United States and Europe.

Anyone with a Tesla model S can use the superchargers for free (no cost). To drive across the country can cost you a fortune in gas. With this there is no cost to drive across the country. You could save a fortune in moving costs. In the video below, Tesla Model X official reveal, Elon Musk says the following:

We created Tesla to make a difference in the world. [Google also said this] The world desperately needs sustainable transport. If we do not solve this problem in this century, we are frapped.

Also please note that if you sit in a running car in a closed garage for 5 minutes that you will die due to the emissions. You do not need to believe in global warming or climate change to understand that. You can always try it to prove that this happens. Electric cars produce no emissions so you can run your car all day in a closed garage if you want to.

They are expanding these 9 Tesla superchargers to over 100 by 2015. See their most recent announcement about what they are doing in the next 2 months (may 31, 2913). With them you can get a half a charge (50% charge) in 20 to 30 minutes. That is about 150 miles of driving with their 85 kWh battery. In 40 to 60 minutes you can get a full charge. These stations or superchargers are powered by solar energy.

June 6, 2013: The rate of recharge can be increased! Musk said "We’re increasing the maximum charge rate from 90 kW to 120 kW…. If you reference this relative to the standard Model S, which has a 60 kWh pack,… a typical case would be a 2/3 recharge in just over 20 minutes.”

May 24, 2014 News Update

Today Tesla has 94 supercharger stations in North America (all in the U.S. now). For the latest on this number and a map of where all these stations are see Tesla Supercharger. They have 17 stations in Europe and 3 stations in Asia (all in China now). End of Update

The cost of the Tesla model S is about $70,000 but can be leased for between $500 and $750 monthly. Currently 10% of Americans (10 million people) can afford these. The next step of Tesla (after model X family car in 2014) will be to build much cheaper ELECTRIC cars for the average person, like around $35,000 each. In May, 2010, Tesla bought an auto or car factory for $42 million that can manufacture 500,000 cars a year!

Latest News June 6, 2013. Here is a well researched article by Forbes: Tesla Stock Today Looking A Lot Like General Motors In 1915. It says:

Tesla’s vision in building the infrastructure necessary to provide ready re-charging locations for their cars in the form of their innovative “Supercharger” stations that utilize electricity from solar panels made by another Elon Musk company, Solar City (SCTY) while providing free charging for life for owners of Tesla products is something sorely lacking in the efforts and vision of other electric vehicle manufacturers.

Also Tesla is going to let other electric cars use their supercharger stations, but at a cost. They are already making batteries for Toyota and Mercedes Benz. So Tesla can make a fortune just by helping their competitors! End of Latest news.

The CEO of Tesla Motors is billionaire Elon Musk who created PayPal. He has a bachelor's degree in Business from Wharton's (best business school in the country at UPenn) and a second bachelor's degree in Physics from UPenn. He is the CEO of SolarCity that among other things builds charging stations for electric cars (like Tesla) and is the largest provider of solar power systems in the United States. Elon Musk is a billionaire genius with a photographic memory that created a computer game at age 12 and sold it to a computer magazine for $500.

The Tesla stock (TSLA) has gone from about $40 a share to about $90 a share in the last 2 months! Their stock has been rising quickly since the above news. But stocks are a gamble with many trying to make some quick money and many people shorting this stock where they sell borrowed shares hoping that the stock will go down. Many people do believe in investing in a green opportunity for the long term.

There is another article on this website from 2 years ago about if Tesla will be the next Apple as far as stocks go. People giving stock advice are like people saying why it is better to bet on a 3 instead of a 9 while playing roulette. The future is unknown. But this company could be even bigger than Apple. The SolarCity stock (SCTY)(mentioned above) has gone from about $20 a share to $35 a share in the last 2 months.

Latest News May 15, 2013 from Stanley Morgan

Tesla Motors Inc (TSLA) Price Target Jumps To $103 From $47 It says:

The report is one of the most universally positive on Tesla, marking it for mythic success in every feasible way. According to the Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS) analysis, Tesla has four important factors in its favor. The first is its raising of capital by working for competitors, the company’s financing announcement will multiply its base, the newly high share price increases liquidity, and the company is probably the strongest auto brand.

Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA), on the base case spelled out by Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), should be worth $103 per share in approaching months [today it is $84 per share].

[End of Stanley Morgan news. Click on above link to read the whole story so you can go and get your TSLA stock. Note that you can buy stock from Sharebuilder online and there is no minimum ($6.95 cost per trade is only cost).]

In 2007 Tesla Motors was running out of money and in serious trouble (from 2nd video below). So Elon Musk went to Germany to talk to the Mercedes Benz and Daimler company about making their Smart Car electric (see picture above). They changed the gas engine to an electric engine and it was given a test drive. The test drive was so impressive that they gave Tesla Motors a $70 million contract to make electric batteries for their Smart Car. That was just what the company needed to stay in business.

From the title of this article you can tell that it is more about the health of the planet and people doing what is good for the planet and other people. Oil/gasoline is a dirty and expensive source of energy. It is not efficient shipping it all around the world whereas you can create electricity wherever there is sunlight (or even wind). If they raise the price of gasoline to $20 a gallon then you will have to pay that. Also oil spills are devastating to the environment.

Also to get the oil out of the ground they are using things like fracking (hydraulic fracturing) that is bad for the environment. Wikipedia says:

Hydraulic fracturing is the fracturing of various rock layers by a pressurized liquid. Some hydraulic fractures form naturally—certain veins or dikes are examples—and can create conduits along which gas and petroleum from source rocks may migrate to reservoir rocks. Induced hydraulic fracturing or hydrofracturing, commonly known as fracing, fraccing, or fracking, is a technique used to release petroleum, natural gas, or other substances for extraction.

Opponents point to potential environmental impacts, including contamination of ground water, depletion of fresh water, risks to air quality, the migration of gases and hydraulic fracturing chemicals to the surface, surface contamination from spills and flow-back and the health effects of these.

Tesla Motors is named after genius Nikola Tesla, that was alive around the time of Thomas Edison. Tesla was about 150 years ahead of his time. While Edison created direct current (DC) that is used in toys, Tesla created alternating current (AC) that is used in houses and buildings. He set the foundations for the coming of computers and robotics. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Leonardo DiCaprio and George Clooney have bought a Tesla electric car.

The Tesla Roadster was created from a design from Nikola Tesla. Wikipedia says about him:

[He] was a Serbian-American[2][3] inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, physicist, and futurist best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system.

Elon Musk is a movie star (kind of). They now have a third Iron Man movie. The first 2 were great (I saw them) and were a huge success. Otherwise you do not create a third one. Robert Downey Jr played billionaire genius Tony Stark who was Iron Man.

So Downey Jr. was talking to the director of this movie wondering how to play billionaire genius Tony Stark and make him seem like a real person. So he decided to talk to Elon Musk and model Tony Stark after him. This webpage says:

After meeting Musk, [director] Favreau was very impressed and Downey Jr. and he decided to go ahead and base parts of the Tony Stark character on Musk. As Favreau stated: “Elon Musk makes no sense — and that’s the reason I know him. When I was trying to bring the character of genius billionaire Tony Stark to the big screen in Iron Man, I had no idea how to make him seem real. Robert Downey Jr. said, ‘We need to sit down with Elon Musk.’ … Downey was right. Elon is a paragon of enthusiasm, good humor and curiosity — a Renaissance man in an era that needs them.”

Musk actually appears in the movie Iron Man 2 with a brief cameo where he tries to pitch Tony Stark on making an electric jet plane. This cameo happens during the restaurant scene shortly before Stark goes out and becomes the driver of the Formula 1 car.

He [Elon Musk] got into the electric car business, despite the incredibly high risk factor, for the same type of reasoning, wanting to help mankind, this time through helping the environment. He also helped found Solar City, with similar motives.

Elon Musk also has a billion dollar space company, SpaceX-- to go public at the end of 2013. NASA has given $500 million to this company to do work for them. Since Elon Musk is CEO and CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of this company that means that Elon Musk is a rocket scientist!

The second video below is 52 minutes long but in the first 2 minutes it has the scene of Musk in the Iron Man movie. His father was an engineer and his mother was a model and a nutritionist. He was a huge reader of comic books and he has a photographic memory.

Unlike Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, Musk did graduate college (see above about University of Pennsylvania [UPenn]). UPenn became the first university in the country when they created the first medical school in the country. Musk went to a graduate program in applied physics and materials science at Stanford in 1995.

But 2 days later he dropped out to start the company Zip2 that provided online content publishing software for news organizations, along with his brother Kimbal Musk. When Elon Musk was 28 years old, he sold Zip2 for $307 million cash, making him a multi-millionaire. The first thing that he did was to go out and buy the best performance car that money could buy. Then he created PayPal that changed the use of money on the internet. They sold PayPal for $1.5 billion.