"Tesla's share price finally fell!"
It was not stock short sellers who expressed this emotion, but financial reporters who breathed a sigh of relief. Due to the daily follow-up reports on Tesla’s rare market, financial reporters have long been at a loss for words and cannot find better words to describe Tesla, a “giant demon stock.”
In the 10 days to February 5, Tesla's stock price has risen all the way, with an increase of more than 60%. If it is a small-cap stock, such an increase is not astonishing, but Tesla is a large-cap stock with a market value of more than 100 billion U.S. dollars, and such a surge is rare. At the time of the most intense trading on February 5, Tesla’s one-day rise and fall was as high as more than 20 billion U.S. dollars, which was approximately equal to the entire market value of Hyundai Motor; Tesla’s trading volume on the day reached 55 billion U.S. dollars, which was close to the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The sum of all transactions for a normal day.
The bulls shouted: "Tesla is the next Apple!" But the bears thought: "Tesla is the next Bitcoin!"
Tesla and Bitcoin, the new and old stars of the global investment community, are linked in this unique way. Two years ago, Bitcoin broke through its historical high, approaching US$20,000, and became the hottest topic in the investment world; two years later, Tesla is in full swing, and its market value once surpassed Bitcoin, becoming the most dazzling star in the investment world. Many analysts, including Wall Street, began to fail to understand Tesla, just as they could not understand Bitcoin two years ago. They believe that Tesla's stock price has the same huge bubble as the Bitcoin price.
Will Tesla be the next Bitcoin? Will Tesla, like Bitcoin, head towards the bubble burst and plummet to the bottom after attracting everyone's attention?
As an early user and investor of both Tesla and Bitcoin, the author makes a detailed inventory of the similarities and differences between the two.
What Tesla and Bitcoin Have in Common
The most immediate commonality: The uptrends of the two stocks are strikingly similar. Tesla stock has experienced the following rocket-like rise:
$300 to $400: 976 days
$400 to $500: 25 days
$500 to $600: 18 days
$600 to $700: 4 days
$700 to $800: 1 day
$800 to $900: 4 hours
Investment expert Michael Novogratz, the founder of Galaxy Digital, a well-known digital currency investment fund, admitted that he was wrong about Tesla after shorting Tesla and lost hundreds of millions of dollars, and compared Tesla’s soaring market with Bitcoin , Surprised to find that the graphics of the two are strikingly similar.
Behind the surprisingly similar price movements, investors are essentially pursuing the leaders of emerging industries and betting on innovation.
In just 11 years, Bitcoin has driven an industry by itself, becoming the vane of digital currency and the barometer of the blockchain industry. In the past 10 years, through forging ahead in new energy vehicles and intelligent driving, Tesla has become the recognized hegemony in the industry today, leading the revolution in the automotive industry.If Bitcoin is the missionary of digital currency and blockchain technology, then Tesla is the leader of new energy vehicles and smart driving technology.
Both Tesla and Bitcoin are in bubbles, but that's not a bad thing. Because investing is investing in the future. Since digital currency and blockchain, new energy vehicles and smart driving are historical development trends, industry leaders who represent trends are bound to be sought after by capital. The price must far exceed the value, in order to attract creative high-end talents and cutting-edge technologies for the development of emerging industries, and to drive the development of the upstream and downstream of the industry and the entire industrial chain.
After Bitcoin soared to a high point at the end of 2017, it drove the development of digital currency mining machines, digital currency exchanges, wallets and blockchain public chain technology, and indirectly promoted the rise of stablecoins and Facebook's multinational alliance stablecoin Libra. It also made traditional finance start to pay attention to digital currency, and began to use blockchain technology to reduce costs. The Bitcoin bubble has contributed a lot to the development of the industry. Similarly, Tesla’s soaring process has also driven the development of upstream batteries, auto parts and artificial intelligence. At the same time, it has also made traditional automakers begin to pay attention to new energy vehicles and vigorously develop intelligent driving technology.It can be said that the price bubble of the leader is the only way for the rise of emerging industries.
Another thing Tesla and Bitcoin have in common is that they have a large and determined fan base.Tesla has produced about 1 million cars so far, and has about 2 million Tesla users. With the addition of stock holders and fans of CEO Musk, Tesla's fans are estimated to reach 10 million. There are about 2 million real users of Bitcoin, and about 20 million people related to digital currency. Although there are only tens of millions of fans of Tesla and Bitcoin, it seems that there are not many fans, but the loyalty of users is very high. JDpower once had an article that surveyed Tesla owners. Quite a few car owners said they would buy Tesla again, and the return rate of car owners was astonishing. Tesla and Bitcoin have never advertised, relying entirely on word of mouth from supporters, showing the strong fan flow and cohesion of the two.
Tesla is not the next Bitcoin.
There are too many differences between Tesla and Bitcoin, which may determine the different fates of the two in the future.
Judging from the attributes of the industry they are in, the two are completely different, and the influence of communication is also very different.. Tesla is in the transportation industry, and Bitcoin belongs to the financial industry. One has real companies, employees, and products that can be seen and touched - cars, which are relatively straightforward and simple for users to accept; One exists in the virtual world of the network, adopts a decentralized structure, has no company, no employees, and it is difficult for users to understand and use products, which requires a certain amount of education and popularization. The essential difference between the two determines the efficiency of Tesla's influence transmission, which is much higher than that of Bitcoin. With the gradual increase in Tesla's production, Tesla can now be seen prominently on the street from time to time. The public can come into contact with Tesla in their daily lives, and each Tesla is an active advertisement. In contrast, Bitcoin is very far from the lives of the masses.
From the perspective of development history, Tesla stands on the moral high ground and has a smooth journey, while Bitcoin is burdened with a heavy burden of life experience and is struggling.Tesla produces new energy smart cars, improves the environment, and benefits mankind, and is easily accepted and supported by the public. Bitcoin, on the other hand, advertises the transformation of traditional finance in a decentralized way, and is often used by criminals for gray or even black illegal transactions. Therefore, there are many people who support Bitcoin, but even more people hate it. It is not easy for the public to accept this controversial new thing.
Regulatory policies and financial markets have diametrically opposite attitudes towards the two. Countries around the world are actively promoting clean energy, so Tesla is welcomed and supported by governments everywhere. For example, the U.S. government’s low-interest loans to start-up energy companies, coupled with huge subsidies for new energy vehicles, helped Tesla get through the difficult start-up stage in 2014-2015. Another example is that when Tesla’s production capacity encountered a bottleneck, the Chinese government gave Tesla the maximum discount and support, and successfully helped it build a super factory in Shanghai within one year and start mass production of the domestic Model 3. This is also one of the important reasons why Tesla's stock price has soared this round.
On the other hand, bitcoin has been suppressed by governments everywhere, and the supervision of bitcoin in various countries is still becoming more and more stringent. While the financial market accepts both, it favors one over the other. The global financial market is completely open to Tesla. In addition to the stock market, there are also bond markets and funds. According to the current market value of Tesla ranked among the top 30 in the world, analysts predict that there is a high probability that in the second half of 2020, the S&P 500 Index and other important indexes will include Tesla as an index stock, and the general public will buy it. Indexes or ETFs can hold Tesla indirectly, which will once again spark a wave of buying Tesla shares. In contrast, Bitcoin’s support from financial markets is limited to futures markets where only institutions participate. In the past three years, the Bitcoin ETF has been rejected by the US Securities Regulatory Commission many times, and the prospect of approval is very slim.
In general, from the perspective of industry attributes, development history, and regulatory and financial market attitudes, Tesla has greater influence than Bitcoin, is more accepted by the public, is more supported by regulatory policies, and is easier to obtain. Financial resources, Tesla's market space and upside potential are far greater than Bitcoin.
Will Tesla be the next Apple?
Despite the large market space and future potential, Tesla's current stock price undoubtedly looks high, especially for a company that has not yet made a full year of profitability. Although the stock price bubble is the only way for emerging industry leaders, how big a bubble is reasonable for Tesla? Or, is there any special reason that supports Tesla's such a high stock price and market value? Will it be the next Apple?
First of all, Tesla does not belong to the valuation system of the auto industry, but belongs to the high-tech company industry.
Tesla's production is less than a fraction of that of Volkswagen, but its market value has already surpassed that of Volkswagen. Wall Street analysts are worried about this and conclude that Tesla's stock price is too high. The root of their misjudgment is to use the traditional auto industry valuation system to measure Tesla, which is unreasonable.
From the very beginning, Tesla has embarked on a completely different product route and design concept from traditional automakers, investing heavily in and using the most advanced technologies. The optimized process and the most advanced automation system are adopted in the manufacturing, and the advantages of its battery, chip and software system are highlighted in the product. In particular, Tesla's software technology is outstanding in three-electric systems, car-machine systems, and autopilot systems. It despises any traditional auto company and dwarfs high-tech companies such as Google and Baidu that have crossed borders into the smart car industry. . Although Tesla's revenue ranks at the bottom of the top ten auto companies, its R&D investment is among the best. The strategy of software and hardware going hand in hand is Tesla's ace weapon. ''
The advantages of Tesla's software and hardware are concentrated in its autopilot system. Its automatic driving system consists of three parts: chip FSD, visual processing software TeslaVision and automatic driving software Autopilot.
FSD is independently developed by Tesla. It is an intelligent chip for autonomous driving software. It is manufactured using a 14-nanometer process and has a dual-core neural network array. Its computing power is 40 times higher than that of ordinary artificial intelligence such as Nvidia chips, but it consumes less energy. TeslaVision is an integrated software for processing road condition information. TeslaVision collects and analyzes data from 8 high-definition cameras, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and 1 enhanced forward-facing millimeter-wave radar at all times to provide the driving system with real-time road conditions accurate to the centimeter level. Autopilot is the benchmark for the autonomous driving industry, and is currently the most secure, most reliable, and most widely used autonomous driving software. At present, Autopilot has collected 3.5 billion kilometers of driving data, far ahead of other self-driving software competitors. According to a safety report released by Tesla, drivers with Autopilot enabled will have one accident for every 3.27 million miles driven. By comparison, the latest NHTSA data shows that there is one accident for every 498,000 miles driven in the United States. In other words, the safety of Tesla's autopilot system has reached six times the safety of human driving.
The valuation of companies with a perfect combination of software and hardware in the capital market will increase significantly. If Apple is just a mobile phone manufacturer, its valuation will not exceed one trillion US dollars, and it will not become a great company. If Microsoft was only a software company and did not launch the Surface series of computers, it would not be able to achieve its stock price to break through the historical high recently and return to the top ten in the world by market value. At onceJust as we cannot define Apple as a mobile phone manufacturing company alone, Tesla should not be regarded as a car company, but as a high-tech company.
The special attributes of the car require Tesla's hardware and software to be more accurate and stable than Apple and Microsoft. Because the slowdown of mobile phones and computers can be tolerated, and errors can be restarted or sent for repairs, but when the car is driving at high speed, the slightest mistake will endanger the safety of personal property. Therefore, Tesla's technical gold content is extremely high.
At the same time, Tesla's innovation in software is also eye-catching.Tesla is the first to launch the "Firmware Over-The-Air (FOTA)" mode. In the past, if a traditional car company had a defect, it would cost billions of dollars and several months to recall and repair it. Now Tesla can remotely update the data and solve it through the FOTA model in half an hour to a few weeks. In May 2018, the US "Consumer Report" pointed out that the braking distance of the Model 3 is too long, which poses certain safety risks. The company upgraded the brake system through FOTA, which shortened the distance of all Model 3 brakes by more than 6 meters within a few weeks.
FOTA not only shows its talents in repairing defects, but also in function upgrading. The happiest time for Tesla owners is to use FOTA to upgrade the software every now and then, which can not only achieve power improvement and faster acceleration, but also increase battery life, increase the comfort and safety of automatic driving, and often have unexpected easter egg functions , such as surfing the Internet, singing KTV, playing games, and the long-awaited smart summoning function (that is, the cool function that the owner can remotely summon Tesla to automatically drive to the side through the mobile phone). For car owners, every time they upgrade, it feels like changing a car, which greatly improves user experience and loyalty. Because of FOTA, Tesla's depreciation rate is much lower than other traditional cars. According to IHS Markit's prediction, the cost saved in Tesla's FOTA software update can reach 35 billion U.S. dollars in 2022; other research reports show that FOTA slows down Tesla's depreciation and can save 12 billion U.S. dollars in car depreciation costs every year.
Many people believe that Tesla is the "Apple of the auto industry".This makes sense. If you experience Tesla yourself, you will be even more convinced. Because Tesla's car is like a big iPhone with four wheels, which brings a new driving experience to users.If the traditional auto industry valuation system is used to calculate, and Tesla’s technical characteristics are ignored, the value of Tesla will inevitably be far underestimated.
Secondly, the ecological landscape of new energy smart cars created by Tesla has huge potential.
Tesla's models range from the mass-produced electric supercar Roadster, the electric luxury sports car Model S, the electric off-road vehicle Model X, to the electric ordinary sedan Model 3, and the upcoming electric ordinary off-road vehicle Model Y with higher profit margins , electric pickup Cybertruck, and electric truck Semi, which cover a wide range of models and meet the differentiated needs of multiple types of users.
However, selling cars is only one source of Tesla's profit, just as Apple's mobile phone is only a part of the total revenue. Relying on its dominant position in the industry and its leading technology in software and hardware, Tesla has continuously begun to expand various businesses based on smart electric vehicles.
For example, charging stations, as of December 2019, there are 1,804 Tesla super charging stations and 15,911 super charging piles in the world. In the early stage, in order to expand the market, a lot of charging was free, but now most of them have turned to the charge model, which is equivalent to the car manufacturer running a gas station concurrently. Relying on Tesla's advantages in batteries, Tesla fully acquired SolarCity in 2016, actively expanding its new energy output business including solar energy.
Another example is value-added data services. Tesla has launched digital value-added services. Car owners can enjoy real-time traffic data, video and audio entertainment and other data services after paying a data fee of US$10 per month. In the future, if any in-vehicle software wants to run on the Tesla in-vehicle platform, it will bring real income to the Tesla platform. The biggest trump card in Tesla's hands lies in the billions of kilometers of driving data collected through the Autopilot automatic driving system. It is not ruled out that Tesla will develop a public data service business in the future to provide valuable data services for industries that require intelligent driving. This is equivalent to the fact that automobile manufacturers are concurrently engaged in private and public data services.
With the data collected by Tesla's in-vehicle system, Tesla has a good understanding of the driving habits and risk levels of car owners. Tesla has begun to provide customized car insurance services for car owners in the United States, and the premium is lower than that of traditional car insurance, which means that car manufacturers are also engaged in insurance business.
Tesla also plans to launch the car-sharing application Robotaxi to enter the field of shared travel. Car owners can add their Tesla electric vehicles to the online car-hailing fleet through the car-sharing application, or use the app to call a car for travel. The company is also engaged in shared car travel business.
A huge ecological map based on Tesla as a platform, covering charging business, new energy business, public-to-private data business, insurance business and car-sharing travel business, is already looming.
Finally, Musk’s personal charm and the synergistic effect of his companies cannot be underestimated.
Investing is investing in people. And Musk is called the modern version of "Iron Man". His personal charm, influence, execution and vision are unique in the world today.
Musk is the soul of Tesla, but Tesla is not the first miracle created by Musk. In 2000, Musk founded X.com (the predecessor of PayPal). In June 2002, Musk established the Space Exploration Technology Corporation (Space X) to build private commercial reusable rockets, and successfully launched and recovered rockets many times. SpaceX plans to realize Mars immigration in the future and create a real alien civilization for human beings.
In 2018, Musk also teamed up with other companies to launch the "vacuum tube steel transportation" Hyperloop plan, or "super high-speed rail", with the goal of traveling at a super high speed of 5,000 kilometers per hour in a pipeline close to vacuum. If this kind of super high-speed rail can be realized, it will be unbelievably fast. If you take a train from Beijing to Shenzhen and accidentally take a nap and forget to get off in Shenzhen, you will be sent back to Beijing by the same route in 20 minutes. up. While preparing the Hyperloop plan, Musk established The Boring Company to send the car into the underground tunnel for fast transportation at a speed of 200 kilometers per hour to avoid ground traffic jams.
In early 2020, Musk said that his biotechnology startup Neuralink, a company dedicated to connecting the human brain and computers, will release a major upgrade of brain-computer interface technology later this year, which will be used in the brain or spinal cord. human patients with injuries or birth defects. ,
In February of this year, Musk's SpaceX platform separated and became an independent Starlink project, planning to deploy 1,584 communication satellites in low-earth orbit 550 kilometers above the earth to achieve global high-speed Internet access services. Starlink has sent more than 200 communication satellites into space. Musk happily announced on Twitter that he can use Starlink to send messages, which is one step closer to the idea of space Internet.
It can be seen from Musk's experience that being called a "technical madman" is by no means a vain name. The most commendable thing is that most of the promises made by Musk can be realized, and the style of doing what he says has caused investors who shorted Tesla to suffer a lot. In August 2018, Tesla’s performance was better than expected. In order to satirize the short sellers who shorted Tesla, Musk sent shorts to the short sellers (English short sellers and shorts are both Shorts).
Tesla's high stock price has nothing to do with Musk's personal charm and glorious history. As Musk recently mentioned on Twitter: "Build 100 interstellar spacecraft every year, build 1,000 ships in ten years, and send them to Mars with a carrying capacity of 100 million tons or 100,000 people per year. This is my goal. Goal. Building such a large fleet of Mars is why I am trying to make money here on Earth."
Musk needs to enable Tesla to achieve great commercial success to support multiple ambitions including space development. At the same time, the synergy of Musk's business layout will also open up a broader space for Tesla.
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(The current trajectory of the Roadster sent to space)
Many people bought Tesla shares because of their admiration for Musk. They firmly believe that Musk can lead Tesla to become the "Apple of the auto industry", and firmly believe that Musk can realize these dreams that are open to imagination but of great significance to mankind. When sensibility exceeds rationality, and fans and admirers become investors in Tesla, it is futile to talk about any valuation system at this time. This is one of the reasons why Wall Street analysts are amazed by Tesla's stock price.
The market value of Bitcoin, the leader of the blockchain, can reach 160 billion US dollars. As a leader in new energy vehicles and smart driving, how can Tesla have a market value of only 130 billion US dollars?
Apple's market value can reach 1.3 trillion US dollars. Tesla, as the "Apple in the automotive industry", has such a broad future. Can the market value only be 130 billion US dollars?
Tesla is not the next Bitcoin, and may surpass Apple.
