If you had the good sense to buy Tesla stock, this would be a good time to sell it. Electric cars are not going to be the next big thing.
I have seen three great inventions during my life — cellphones, remote control devices for television and wheels on suitcases. That last one was particularly stunning. When I was a young man, people schlepped their suitcases through the airport. If you weren’t strong enough to carry your luggage, you either hired a porter or rented a cart. Most people schlepped.
One day I was at an airport and saw a fellow walking along pulling his suitcase. I did a double-take. The suitcase had wheels. There goes a weirdo, I thought. The next time I was at an airport, everybody but me was pulling their suitcase.
The cellphone and remote control devices also took the world by storm, but they involved new technology. Wheels had been around for thousands of years.
Technology aside, what do those three inventions have in common?
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They made things easier.
Electric cars make things better, but better does not move the marketing needle.
Truth is, electric cars make things more difficult. If you want to go on a road trip, you can’t just pull into a small town and fill up at a gas station. You need to find a charging station.
Would electric cars lower our carbon footprint and so, reduce the accelerations of climate change?
Smart people say yes, but we no longer trust smart people. We call them elites. We’re sick of them. Plus, there are counterarguments. For one thing, the batteries need a source of electricity to get charged. It isn’t as if they’re running on solar power. So there will be dueling experts. We know how it goes with dueling experts. Half the people believe Dr. Fauci, and half believe the Pillow Guy.
There is also the very question of climate change. There are skeptics.
Shrewd investors look realistically at the world around them. Do that for a moment here. Do you think people are going to embrace something just because the elites say it will help the planet? I remember when there was a move to ban plastic bags at grocery stores. Plastic bags find their way into the oceans and do great damage, the elites told us. If we simply banned them from grocery stores and made people use canvas or paper bags, we could do some real good.
Hearing these arguments, the Missouri Legislature quickly passed a law making it illegal for municipalities to ban plastic bags at grocery stores.
That was in 2015, and things have gotten worse. Or better, depending on how you look at these things.
It’s not just that people won’t listen to experts. We have learned to ignore our lying eyes.
Face masks are just one example. My wife was a dentist. She always wore a mask. It was considered basic hygiene. Surgeons wore masks. Basic hygiene again.
In June, 2020, when COVID was still relatively new, two hair stylists at a Great Clips in Springfield, Missouri, tested positive. While infected themselves, the two stylists had worked on 140 clients. It seemed we were about to have our first big outbreak. That did not happen. None of the clients was infected. Neither were the six coworkers. Nor any of the people they worked on.
Clay Goddard, the Green County Director of Health, said, “The take-away to me is clear and I’m not going to gloss over it. I was an early skeptic of masking. When I looked at the practice in Asia, I believed that to be a cultural phenomenon and I’m on the record saying that. This changed my mind entirely.”
Late last month, the Springfield School Board voted against a temporary mask mandate. Maybe that was smart. Our attorney general would have sued the district had they imposed one.
That is the reality of our times, yes to plastic bags and no to masks.
This is not a good time for electric cars.
Plus, they will become another battle in our Culture Wars. “The Democrats are not just coming for your guns. This time they want your trucks, too. In fact, please throw your guns in the back of your pickup, and the government will haul everything away.” That will be about as popular as defunding the police.
It seems increasingly likely that the Democrats will lose control of Congress in November. It is awfully hard to imagine a Republican Congress committing a lot of money to a national network of charging stations. Without such a network, traveling will continue to be more difficult with electric cars.
How many successful inventions make life more difficult?
We liberals had our two-year window to build our network. It was never really wide open, but there was a tiny crack of opportunity. That is gone.
If you bought Telsa stock a few years ago, you have had a wonderful ride. You probably even felt good about yourself while you were making money. I am guessing that is not a good sign. The people who bought tulip bulbs in Holland in 1634 probably felt good about themselves. Who knew that beautiful flowers could be such a smart investment? It is always better to feel slightly squeamish as you make money. Selling weapons to third world countries is a good investment.
If you own a Tesla, you probably feel you are displaying your goodness just by driving around. If so, you are living in a bubble. The rest of the country does not share your good-earth fantasies. SUVs, baby. Big trucks. That’s what the world craves.
That’s what investors should be thinking about. What do people want? They want easy. They don’t want to have to leave the couch to change the channel or answer the phone. And certainly, they don’t want to have to carry their suitcase through the airport.
What a wonderful invention that was.
The only thing an electric car has in common with a suitcase with wheels is the wheels.
Smart Money is avoiding Tesla.
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February 19, 2022 at 09:00PM
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