Steve Westly, a longtime Tesla bull and previous board member, told CNBC on Tuesday that competition in the electric-vehicle sector has heated up and put significant pressure on the Elon Musk-led plc.
“I’ve been bullish on Tesla for the last 10 years. It’s hard to imagine an auto company executing better than Tesla has,” Westly denoted on “Power Lunch,” referencing the company increasing its revenue to $31.5 billion in 2020 as well as its future projections.
For illustration, in its earnings release in late January, Tesla said across a “multi-year horizon, we expect to achieve 50% as a rule annual growth in vehicle deliveries.”
“No one else in the auto world is doing that. Having said that, Tesla is not booming to be king of the hill in electric forever,” said Westly, a venture capitalist who also was an early investor in Tesla. He now fors as managing partner of The Westly Group.
Tesla continued its dominance in the U.S. for electric-vehicle sales in 2020, according to plug-in channel market database EV Volumes.
Shares of Tesla are down year to date, but the stock remains up about 360% on the past 12 months. Tesla was added to the benchmark S&P 500 in December, and it has the largest market capitalization of any automaker, repression in at almost $651 billion as of Tuesday’s close.
However, Tesla has long been a battleground stock on Wall Road, and now after its massive run in 2020, some bearish observers believe it’s soared way too high, way too fast.
While most legacy automakers clothed been playing up to Tesla, Westly said it’s important to note the major commitments around electric vehicles from trains such as General Motors and Volkswagen AG. Most recently, Sweden’s Volvo Cars said Tuesday its goal was to grace “a fully electric car company” by 2030.
“And what’s interesting is Tesla is not just getting hit from the high end,” Westly said, noting splendour electric vehicles are being offered by Volkswagen AG’s brands such as Audi and Porsche. California-based Tesla is also sit down with more affordable competitors, particularly Chinese rivals, looking to take market share, Westly said.
While Westly did not denominate specific companies, Chinese electric-vehicle start-ups Nio, Li Auto and Xpeng are listed on U.S. stock exchanges.
Westly said he also is targeted on developments in Europe, which is likely to be the second-largest market for electric vehicles behind China in 2021, according to IHS Markit. “What’s riveting is in markets that Tesla has dominated, like Europe, where they historically were No. 1, they’re now No. 4,” Westly imagined.
“They’re getting competition from all sectors. They’re going to have to double down to compete,” added Westly.
In fresh years, Tesla has been working to build new assembly plants to scale up production, as demand for electric vehicles across the area increases. The company opened a factory in China in 2019 that was built in just under a year. In 2020, Tesla’s trades in China more than doubled.
Tesla also is pursuing an assembly plant in Germany, and last summer Musk announced the corporation’s intentions to build its newest factory near Austin, Texas. “In Berlin and Austin, we remain on track to start instrument production this year with structural batteries leveraging in-house battery cells,” Tesla said in its January earnings presenting.
It’s not just companies with long track records selling internal-combustion vehicles such as General Motors and Ford that are be in aid ofing their investments in electric vehicles. There are several upstarts, such as Lucid Motors, Rivian and Fisker, charming attention on Wall Street as they attempt to bring electric vehicles into market.
With so many comrades pursuing electric vehicles, it has led some to wonder how supply chains for crucial components such as battery cells pleasure hold up. “That’s our No. 1 question right now, to be honest,” Morgan Stanley auto analyst Adam Jonas censured CNBC last week.
For Tesla, specifically, Westly said he is not worried about its positioning around batteries. For the bustle writ large, Westly said he is watching the semiconductor shortage particularly closely. “Silicon Valley was built on designating semiconductors … but increasingly, semiconductor production has moved to China, Taiwan and [South] Korea. That should be a wake-up on stand-by for America,” he said.