Thread by @AukeHoekstra

Outstanding @Tesla blog by Jack Ricard of @evtv with two claims:

1) Tesla is going to crush existing car makers because of its technological lead.

2) Carmakers, oil companies and the SEC are trying to take Tesla down through stock manipulation.

evtv.me/2019/08/the-te…

First: I'm not a Tesla or Elon groupie. I think both have done an outstanding job that has accelerated the transition to EVs multiple years. But when I wrote my 1st book on EVs it was already inevitable (in my eyes). Tesla was 1 of dozens of companies making small batches of EVs.

Right now we see almost all car makers are getting in on the EV act and multiple new parties with deep pockets (e.g. in China) are joining the fray.
Tesla has a lead on many technological fronts and an incredibly talented and motivated team of engineers lead by a visionary.

So Tesla has a great future ahead of it. But I don't see why its feats could not be replicated by other companies. Especially since it has no patents to block others (and doesn't want to) and since it's stronger on vision and design than mass production.

With that out of the way, Jack Ricard makes an excellent point: it increasingly looks like buying people to publish misinformation about Tesla and shorting Tesla are weapons wielded with the purpose of manipulating the stock and bringing Tesla down.

He rightly points out that oil companies have multiple billions to gain for every DAY that the transition to EVs is delayed. And we know they are already paying for campaigns to discredit climate science, so why not buy some negative stories and short some stocks?

And car companies have a lot to win too when Tesla fails or EVs get delayed. And #dieselgate was a good reminder of the lengths they will go to in order to increase their profits.

It's also a good demo of how these things work. There was not one person deciding: let's cheat.

Instead all car makers lobbied for loopholes in the EU untill cheating was part of the game. They would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for the more adversarial role the EPA plays in the US. (I knew this was happening in 2014 from different test reports.)

So I would not be surprised if this conspiracy is basically the incumbents egging each other on to take down this uppity newcomer and getting more brazen at every lie they manage to distribute and more willing to invest in shorts as a cheap way (for them) of harassment.

It's even possible some incompetents in the SEC are so much part of this old boys network that they honestly believe Elon's tweets are worse transgressions than all the lies and that they write off the remarkable amount of stocks as a coincidence.

But if I had to get guess I would say there clearly is a pattern an some people 'on the inside' must be aware of this. It's high time a criminal investigation into these practices is started.

But I'm not a stock expert so what do you think? Pls let me knowxand pool knowledge!