Plug-in Vehicles

by Lynne Kiesling The Tesla Model S: Bypassing dealer franchises. For now. Tesla Motors (NASD:TSLA) is doing more than shaking up the automobile industry by producing an exciting high-end electric vehicle and establishing a network of battery-swapping stations. Tesla wants to sell directly to consumers, bypassing established dealer franchising that dominates the industry. But such dealer franchising has not been a mere transaction-cost-driven Coasian outcome it’s undergirded by state laws that require manufacturers to sell their automobiles through independent dealers (Francine Lafontaine and Fiona Scott Morton, Journal of...

by Debra Fiakas CFA   If you are putting together a list of 2013 phenomena, you can put Tesla Motors (TSLA:  Nasdaq) and its Model S electric car near the top.  The stock bounced off a low of $32.11 in early January last year and nearly went into orbit.  TSLA share closed the year 2013 at $150.43, representing a return of 368% from the 52-week low.  Impressive!  The market pundits cannot seem to get enough of Tesla and its founder/CEO Elon Musk.  Yet Tesla is not the only electric car producer that has met with...

by Debra Fiakas CFA CarCharging Group, Inc. (CCGI:  OTC) producers electric car charging stations.  It partners with property owners such as shopping malls or parking garages to operating the charging stations and collect fees from electric car owners.  At the end of September 2013, the last time the company reported financial results. CarCharging had eighty-seven strategic partnerships with a gaggle of private and public entities such as Walgreens, Icon Parking, the City of Miami Beach, and the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection.    A mobile app helps car owners find locations by city or zip code. CarCharging...

John Petersen The hardest part of blogging on subjects like energy storage and vehicle electrification is synthesizing the mass of data that's generated every year. While I'm not an engineer and don't have any special technical expertise beyond the lessons I learned as a director and officer of a small battery technology developer, my training as a lawyer and accountant stand me in pretty good stead when it comes to reviewing statistical forecasts and comparing the current version of a forecast with earlier versions of the same forecast. Every year the US Energy Information Administration, a unit...

By Jeff Siegel If you don't believe that folks are waiting impatiently for Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA) to slip up, look no further than today's action on the stock. After the Wall Street Journal reported that the company was selling fewer cars and offering new incentives, the stock tanked 6 percent. Of course, as it turned out, the decline in sales was only in the U.S. And it didn't take long for super genius Elon Musk to tweet the following message: Credit Suisse analyst Daniel Galves followed up on the piece, noting that...

John Petersen In my second quarter update I deleted China Ritar Power (CRTP.PK) from my energy storage tracking list because of its decision to terminate its SEC registration during a period when China-based companies with US listings were bogged down in a dense fog of suspicion. Since then the carnage in the energy storage sector has been far worse than I expected and it's time to permanently remove the companies highlighted in pink from my energy storage and vehicle electrification tracking list for the reasons described below. Current Culls In March of this year...

Tom Konrad CFA   My friend and frequent electric vehicle (EV) critic John Petersen recently worried that Tesla (NASD:TSLA) shareholders now buying the stock because of the launch of the company’s new Model S were doomed to lose money, since the company is just entering the “trough of disillusionment,” as shown in this stylized diagram of the losses a company suffers in the Valley of Death from Osawa and Miyazaki. Although Petersen is relentlessly negative on EVs, he has a great depth of experience with launching new technologies, and...

Doug Young Tesla sets ambitious China targets US electric car maker Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) is setting some tough goals for itself during its first year in China, aiming to take advantage of government incentives and its high-end brand image to quickly take a big share of the market. I did a little math based on the company’s latest remarks, and its ambitious target for this year would represent around three-quarters of all electric vehicles sold in China in 2012. If it really can meet the new target, I suspect the...

John Petersen Last Friday President Obama and executives from thirteen leading automakers gathered in Washington DC to announce an historic agreement to increase fleet-wide fuel economy standards for new cars and light trucks from 27.5 mpg for the 2011 model year to 54.5 mpg for the 2025 model year. While politicians frequently spin superlatives to describe mediocre results, I believe the President's claim that the accord "represents the single most important step we've ever taken as a nation to reduce our dependence on foreign oil" is a refreshing example of political understatement. After three decades of demagoguery, debate,...

Doug Young Tesla launches trade-in program. Bottom line: Tesla and other EV makers is likely to face an uphill road in China for the next year, but prospects could start to improve in mid 2015 as new initiatives gain momentum. Reports on a new trade-in promotion from Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) are recharging talk earlier this month that the high-flying electric vehicle (EV) maker isn’t doing as well as hoped in China, where sales have gotten off to a slow start. This kind of a sluggish start isn’t too unexpected,...

Doug Young Bottom line: Tesla’s newly announced modest China sales and announcement of a plan for potential local production reflect the uphill road it faces in the Chinese market, which is unlikely to get much easier in the next 2 years. China is fast becoming the land of promising upstart companies that failed to reach their potential, with word that former new energy superstar Tesla (Nasdaq: TSLA) has posted very ho-hum car sales in a market where it once held out big hopes. The rare China sales figures...

Company Delivers Electrifying Performance But Stock Gets Shocked. Arthur Porcari What’s that old Wall Street saying. “No Good Deed Goes Unpunished”?  Well, management and shareholders of US listed, China based, always profitable uncontested leader in Electric Vehicle (EV) manufacturing and “Quick Battery Exchange” (QBE) development, Kandi Technologies (NASDAQ-KNDI), know the feeling well. As of now, five months after I published my first article on KNDI, the stock, which subsequently more than doubled on incredible volume, has now made a full round trip and is back to where it started. This in spite of significant business advances and a...

Doug Young Bottom line: Trina’s new loan and BYD’s uncertain outlook for EV sales this year reflect continued reliance of new energy technology companies on state support, which could pressure them as government incentives get retired. Two new energy stories are in the headlines today, reflecting the progress but also the continued reliance on government support that this up-and-coming group of companies faces. That particular reality isn’t new, though some who were hoping the industries would become commercially independent more quickly may be disappointed. But more important, this reality could challenge many of the companies in the...

John Petersen The sunshine, lollipops and rainbows electric car press was at it again in mid-March. This time they were gushing over a $3,800 report from Pike Research predicting that automotive lithium-ion battery prices will fall by more than one-third by 2017. According to Pike, the market for Li-ion batteries for transportation will grow from $2.0 billion annually in 2011 to more than $14.6 billion for 28 million kWh of batteries by 2017. For those without a calculator handy, the figures work out to a future industry average price of $520 per kWh in 2017 versus a current...

Tesla's "Long Shot" Could be a Game-Changer By Jeff Siegel “It's a long shot at best.” That's what Bank of America analyst John Lovallo recently said regarding Tesla's new stationary battery packs being designed for individual homes. While we know Lovallo is incredibly bearish on Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) – locking in a sell rating and a $65 price target on the stock – he is right. Such an ambitious goal is a long shot. But you know what else is a long shot? The existence of a superior electric car that can travel 200 miles on a single...

Jeff Siegel September 25: Toyota (NYSE:TM) Scraps Electric Car 2012 Toyota Prius photographed in Washington, D.C., USA.. (Photo credit: IFCAR via Wikimedia Commons) Claiming the company misread the market, Toyota (NYSE:TM) is scrapping its plans for a global roll-out of an electric mini-car called the eQ. To be honest, I'm not particularly surprised. Toyota has not been very aggressive, or interested really, in pursuing the electric vehicle (EV) market. And I get it. When it comes to delivering a superior conventional hybrid vehicle, Toyota still runs...