Reasons to buy a Tesla EV (Electric Vehicle)
and/or Tesla Stock

First, Tesla's Mission Statement...

 

And now, the vehicles...

Safety

EVs are automatically safer than cars with gasoline engines because in most EVs, there is nothing under the hood that can be pushed into the cabin (passenger area) in a head-on collision. So there's a larger "crumple zone" to absorb impact. But not all EVs are the same when it comes to safety.

Teslas are the safest cars manufactured today – EV or gasoline. This is not an opinion, it is an objective fact. The U.S. National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) has stated as much if you read all their safety data for all the cars they've tested over the decades (they're the agency that crashes cars and tries to roll them over etc).

This focus on safety by Tesla is not by accident... it's by design. The CEO of Tesla, Elon Musk, simply told his design engineers that he wanted to build the safest car in the world. Yes, this would cost more, but Musk is not your average profit-driven CEO, which allows him to make these kinds of decisions... decisions that are in the customers' best interests.

 

Keep in mind that when seatbelts were first invented, they were offered to consumers as an option. When Congress wanted to mandate that they be installed in all cars as standard equipment, the car manufacturers objected and tried to stop Congress from mandating them. Why? It would increase the cost of the cars, lowering profits unless the automakers passed the additional costs onto the consumer, and some automakers, in an effort to gain a competitive edge, wouldn't, thus hurting the profits of the other automakers who'd have to follow suit to be competitive. So all the automakers fought seat belts as standard equipment... because they wanted to make money from them, demonstrating just how much they care about you. And now these same car companies are starting to make EVs. Keep this in mind.

And what about the new safety innovations that automakers have come up with on their own that aren't mandated. If you want them, you'll have to buy a higher trim level car (the more expensive version of the car model you want). Elon Musk thinks that's "bullshit". So every safety innovation that his Tesla engineers have come up with is put into all Tesla car versions, and none are options, because to do so is "unethical" in his words. And if you assume that he simply raises the price of the car when he adds a new safety feature, he doesn't. Like I said, a different kind of CEO.

And while we're talking about safety, here's another reason Teslas are safer than any other car. Airbags. All other automakers buy them "off the shelf" (made by an airbag manufacturing company). Tesla's CEO felt that today's airbags could be improved upon. He told his engineering staff to do that – with his help (he's an engineer) – and they came up with a better airbag, but they had to make it themselves, so they did. And all the airbags in a Tesla will deploy based on the type of crash the car is involved in... also the only car in the world to do this.

What about a seatbelt innovation? Tesla's are the only car to have seat belt "pre-tensioners". What do they do? When the car senses that it's about to be involved in a collision (courtesy of its seven cameras that surround the vehicle and the computer they feed into), the car will add tension to the seatbelts to further limit the body's forward motion at the moment of impact. An option? No. It was simply a very good idea, so it was done. Another good idea is an airbag that comes out in between the driver and the passenger so they don't collide with each other. And yes, Tesla is the only car with that too.

 

What the heck are "smart" airbags?!! Tesla is the only automaker with smart airbags. The seats are fitted with sensors that detect the weight of the occupant, their position in the seat, and the position of the seat relative to the airbag, and the airbag computer is also aware of the speed and trajectory of the vehicle. So every microsecond the airbag computer is deciding, "If I were to deploy the airbags for the front passenger seat right now, how would I do it for maximal safety/protection?" Every microsecond! It can change the order in which the bags deploy, and the speed of their deployment. And that decision would be acted upon should the airbags be deployed. No other automaker does this. Sure, other cars detect whether or not someone is sitting in the passenger seat, but that's it. And Tesla doesn't even promote that their cars have this system! Maybe when Tesla starts advertising, they'll announce this as another nail in the coffin of the other EVs. Oh, and Elon Musk also said that with these airbags, seat belts are no longer needed, but the cars still have them because Tesla is required to install them (and we're still required to wear them).

What about highway safety? Some cars have "lane departure" warnings, so that if your car starts drifting across a lane line, you'll hear a beep or the steering wheel will vibrate. Not good enough for Tesla (because a crash could result because of slow driver reaction time). So Tesla came up with "AutoPilot" for highway driving. It incorporates Traffic Aware Cruise Control – which many cars do have today – with Automatic Lane Keeping, which most cars do not have. Meaning, when you engage Tesla's AutoPilot on the highway, the car drives itself. Yes, you have to make lane changes manually when needed, and you have to get on and off the highway manually, but while on the highway, the car takes care of the driving. And it does so better than a human being! How? The car has seven cameras all feeding data into a state-of-the-art computer programmed to drive better than any human can. It can react faster than a human, it can't be distracted or fall asleep, and it can see from all those cameras at the same time. And NHTSA has said that Tesla's AutoPilot has already saved lives. How? If another car starts veering into your lane and is about to contact your car at 75 MPH, the Tesla can either quickly jump into an adjacent lane to avoid contact, or if it can't, it can accelerate very quickly to avoid that contact (because EVs have super fast acceleration). In similar scenarios, a human driver wouldn't be aware of the impending contact until after it's happened. I've seen lots of Youtube videos of this amazing feat (after a near miss, the Tesla driver can push a button and the last five minutes of video from all seven cameras is saved to a flashdrive that's in the glove compartment, and these video files can be uploaded to Youtube. Thank you Elon Musk for this feature). And AutoPilot comes standard with all Teslas.

 

 

And then there's Tesla's "Full Self Driving" feature (FSD). It will drive the car just like AutoPilot, but on city streets (where most accidents happen). It recognizes stop signs, traffic lights, pedestrians, bicyclists, dogs, other cars of course, cones, garbage cans, double-parked vehicles, parked car doors suddenly opening, etc... just like you or I would. But it will react faster than us, and it can't be distracted. I've seen the demo videos, and it's 98% there... another year. One day I'll likely have to give up my Driver's License, and wouldn't it be lovely if my car could drive me around so I wouldn't have to rely on other people or Ubers. And of course, Tesla is leading the way with FSD software (others would disagree, but this too is not a matter of opinion).

Handling safety. The heaviest component of an EV is the battery pack. If the EV is designed from "the ground up", the battery pack will be a large rectangular pack only a few inches tall that sits as low to the ground as possible. If you slide yourself under the car, you'd be looking up at the battery pack. This gives the car a very low "center of gravity" which helps make it very stable if you have to do some sudden quick steering maneuvers to avoid hitting something or someone... you're not likely to lose control of the car. Other car companies – now that they're forced to make EVs because of Tesla's success – don't want to design a whole new car, so they take one of their existing car models, change the styling a bit, and plop an electric motor under the hood, and place five or six smaller individual battery packs wherever they can shoehorn them into the car in an effort to save money (and make more profit). Not a good design, and these EVs should be avoided like the plague. And making an EV this way tells you a lot about the car company.

An EV versus a gasoline car

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this topic because I've already penned an article on it (link at the end). Here I'll just speak to why the legacy automakers don't want to make EVs, and hate Tesla for forcing them to (the demand for Tesla EVs is through the roof, and these other automakers are starting to lose money to Tesla because of falling sales of their gasoline cars). To convert their car manufacturing from gas engine cars to electric motor cars will be a huge expense, and they will lose money in the transition, and many of them are barely hanging on as it is. So as consumers discover the many benefits of EVs and their buying habits shift to EVs, many legacy automakers will go bankrupt or be acquired by other companies, or just "go out". They also carry too much debt as it is (Tesla carries virtually no debt). Remember, Tesla started as an EV company... a distinct advantage.

And the existing dealers of legacy automaker cars don't want to sell EVs because they make most of their profit from service, and EVs don't require anywhere near the same amount of service as gas engine cars. In fact, Tesla's service centers are not a revenue generating arm of the company. If you require out-of-warranty service for your Tesla, it will cost you their cost plus 10%. That's insane compared to legacy auto dealers, but a great deal for the consumer. And Tesla has no dealers... you order cars from them as you would order something on Amazon. No having to deal with car salespeople.

The company and its CEO

Let's compare car companies for a moment, keeping in mind that a new car purchase is the second most expensive thing you'll ever buy (the first is a house). So even though you don't hand over $40,000 to the car company you're buying from because you'll likely finance the purchase, the loan company hands over that $40,000 immediately. So it's just like you are doing it. So who do you want to give that money to? Don't you care what company you give that large amount of cash to? Is it a company who honestly cares about you? Do they care about safety first, customer satisfaction second, and profit third, or is it a car company that cares about profit first, second, and third, and they care about safety only as much as they're forced to by regulation. I prefer to support "good" companies.

I've mentioned how much Tesla cares about safety, and it shows. But what about the CEO. The CEO "steers" the company.

GM's CEO: Mary Barra. She lies to the American people saying that GM is the leader in the EV movement. Clearly they aren't; Tesla has been and still is. And actually GM killed the electric car back in 2002 when they came out with one because they thought they'd have to so that they could continue to sell gasoline cars in California. And they came out with a decent one that the 1000 lessees loved and wanted to keep. But when California bowed to pressure from the auto industry (and the fossil fuel industry) and pushed back their state's EV requirements, GM took back all 1000 EVs that were leased out and crushed them. And this is what spurred Elon Musk to do Tesla, because this made him mad (he's one of those people who care about the environment). Even the President of the United States, at an "EV Summit" at the White House where all top U.S. EV automakers' CEOs were invited (except Elon Musk) said, "Mary, you did it, you electrified the entire auto industry, you led, and it matters." (Hmmm, was he clueless and is just saying what's written for him to say, or did he know he's lying?) And GM makes crappy EVs by the way. Their Chevy Bolt started catching on fire just sitting there. This burned down people's homes and cost GM billions in damages, and GM had to recall all Chevy Bolts, all because they didn't want to use the best battery cells, they wanted to use the least expensive ones. Tesla bought the best ones, and is now making their own. Even to this very day, Chevy Bolts are not allowed in airport parking lots and other large parking lots. There are signs right at the entrances, "NO CHEVY BOLTS ALLOWED". Yeh, GM is leading.

TESLA's CEO: Elon Musk. What other automaker's CEO can you tweet on Twitter, saying, "Hey Elon, you know what would be a good idea, having a feature in the car where you push a button and the AC comes on to a preset level and a big readout on the screen shows the internal temperature of the car to show that my dog that's in the car here in Florida in July is not in any danger. Maybe include some text too that points this out." [With an EV, the AC is electric and can run without the car making any noise.] Elon replied, "Good idea!" And three weeks later, 2.5 million Teslas all around the world got a software update that included a new feature called "Dog Mode". And this scenario happened lots of times. Now there's "Joe Mode" where you can make all the beeps and dings that the car makes be a lower volume in case your little kids are sleeping in the back seat. Why "Joe Mode"? It was Joe Mitchell that tweeted Elon requesting this feature, and instead of naming it "Quiet Mode", Elon said to name it after the person who requested it. What other CEO of a car company does this?!!! Do you think if you tweeted GM's Mary Barra requesting a feature, she'll tweet you back? And she couldn't make it happen anyway... their cars' software can't be updated over-the-air like Tesla's can. You'd have to bring it into a dealership for each and every update. Crazy. But the ability to do over-the-air updates makes the automaker less profit. So not having this ability is good for the automaker, but bad for the customer. To discover more about Elon Musk, read his biography.

Fun. Elon wants his cars to be fun too. So while waiting on line to pick up your kids from school, you can play video games on the car's large screen, or watch Youtube videos or Netflix. Or at Christmas time, when you signal to make a turn or lane change, instead of the usual tic-tic-tic sound, you'll hear sleigh bells jingling! Are other EVs fun? No. In addition to being the best designed and safest (and all models having a great sound system), Teslas are also fun and get better with each software update. And the updates are free. And don't get me started on the Tesla app for iPhone or Android phones, or how Tesla is the only EV maker with their own public charging infrastructure that can communicate with the car so you know which charging station has available "pumps" before you arrive, and how they are the only EV manufacturer with mobile service vans because 90% of repairs don't need the car to go up on a lift, so why not have the repair person come to the car. Fun and stress reducing. Can any other EV maker boast this? No. Because this would mean profits don't come first. And Tesla's corporate culture is the reason they will continue to dominate this growth industry.

 

BEV = Battery Electric Vehicle, PHEV = Plugin Hybrid, EREV = Extended Range EV (has a gasoline engine)
The Wuling Hong EV would not be permitted to be sold in the US because it doesn't meet safety standards.

 

 

And let's not forget about their environmental impact (and "ICE" means "internal combustion engine", and "gCO2e/mi" means "grams of carbon dioxide equivalent per mile", and as the grid uses more renewables and less fossil fuels, those two "grid charged" columns will shorten)

 

Tesla stock

There are two types of people who buy stock. Traders and investors. Traders are constantly trading stocks in an effort to maximize their monthly profits (hopefully). Buying and selling and buying and selling often on a daily basis. Investors however buy stock to "go long"... to buy it and hold it for many years in the hope that the value of the stock price will be higher in seven years than when they bought it. A lot less energy intensive and less stressful. And the right investment (stock purchase) can result in more profits at the end of those seven years than seven years of daily trading. I've seen it. But it depends on the company whose stock you buy. What are you looking for? Growth potential.

 

Amazon's stock price history may seem to resemble Tesla's, but it's all about future growth potential. No future growth potential, no meaningful rise in the stock price over time. And there's no sense in buying a stock if it's never going to increase in price very much. So, wise investors look for the stocks that have large growth potential. These days, companies that deal with cutting edge technologies are closely watched. But there's also the industry disrupters that warrant a close look. Back when most people had a horse and buggy (a carriage pulled by a horse), and that was the "mode of transportation of the day", when the first automobile was invented (which were electric by-the-way), it was a huge disrupter. If you could have bought stock in the automobile industry back then, you would have been wise to do so. And like most disruptive technologies, the general public at the time thought the electric "horseless carriage" could never replace the horse and buggy. Never. Blacksmith's and horse breeders weren't worried. But obviously they should have been.

Fast forward to today. Electric Vehicles will eventually replace all fossil fueled vehicles just as the automobile replaced the horse-drawn carriage. Why? The technology has matured since those first electric cars back in 1890, and EVs are way less expensive to maintain and operate, they can last longer, you can fuel them up at home, even from solar energy, and EVs are way better for the environment. Did you know that 98% of all new car sales in Norway are EVs (and 70% of all those EVs are Teslas by-the-way). Some (most) countries are way ahead of the U.S. where only about 5% of all cars are EVs (and Tesla owns about 70% of the EV market here in the U.S.). Some big countries have even decreed that as of 2027 no new cars can be sold if they have tailpipes! So now the word just has to spread to more people. But talk about a growth market! Again, in the U.S. only 5% of all new car sales are EVs in 2022! Similar small numbers for other countries. Just look at the chart below to see the growth market for EVs in the world, and then realize that Tesla has already built huge factories in Texas, California, Nevada, Berlin Germany, and Shanghai China, with more to come. Huge factories... some of the largest in the world. And Tesla already has more than 7 million cars on the road. They are the market leader, and even the CEO of VW said they'd be tough to beat (and he was fired for being honest). And as for "the competition is coming", that's been said for the last five years, and it's still not here. And when people find out how much better a Tesla is than anything made by the legacy automakers, it's game over. Why would someone not want to own stock in a growth company like that!

 

NOTE: China has quickly moved up into third place with 50% in 2024
The U.S. is now 7% in 2024, with California at 25%
Norway is now at 98%
Sweden is now 65%

 

Oh, and it's good to know that Tesla is not just a car company. They have an energy division too, and that's likely to be worth more than the car division in the coming years. But that's a whole 'nuther story. And they have a truck division... the big trucks that pull 40 foot trailers (more on this product below).

Here are some charts that show how Tesla is doing with things like "market cap" and other stock investor metrics.

And this is the article I wrote about the advantages of EVs over gasoline engine cars.

 

"Tesla's just a car company"
Oh yeah?

Tesla stockholders own the following...
(and keep in mind that most of these products are sold world-wide)

Tesla Motors... besides these five models...

...this segment also includes their new 2-door compact car, semi truck, the Tesla public charging infrastructure – "Superchargers" – and their upcoming RoboTaxi fleet

Tesla AI (Self-Driving software which it may license to other EV automakers, but it will make money from subscriptions sold to Tesla vehicle owners)

Tesla Energy (MegaPacks, huge 40 ft long x 8 ft wide battery packs sold to power companies to help stabilize their grid and to avoid building more "peaker" plants; win-win-win)


Tesla Solar (solar panels – see solar roof pic below – and residential battery storage packs – that white box; included under Tesla Energy division above)


Tesla Power (regulatory-wise, like any other power utility company, uses lots of MegaPacks; included under Tesla Energy division above)

Tesla Auto Insurance (picking up steam, now in 19 states in the U.S., and in Europe, highest "take-rate" is when people buy a Tesla vehicle; started because existing auto insurance companies were over-charging Tesla vehicle owners. And you get a lower rate with Tesla Insurance if you let the car drive itself)

Tesla battery cell manufacturing (may sell their cells to other OEMs one day)

Tesla Phone (may make one in the future if current cell phone providers don't stop selling phone owners' data says Tesla CEO, Elon Musk)

Tesla Robotics ("Optimus". It will use them in their factories to enable much faster production of its vehicles, which was the initial reason for making them. And it will be sold to other companies and to consumers)

So the above is why Elon says that Tesla will be "the most valuable company in the world". And I agree. This statement is not one of your typical hyperbolic statements from other CEOs because Elon Musk is not your typical CEO.

And as to Tesla being just a car company, for those who like charts...

And "OTHER BRANDS" as of December 2023 are every other automaker.
Tesla developed the North American Charging Standard for EVs (NACS),
and now every EV automaker wants in. And SASE made Tesla's standard thee industry standard