I have signed up for some of the Motley Fool reports over the past 12-15 years. I felt they had a pretty good take on how to determine if a company was going to be a good investment or not. Sometime around 2012 they listed Tesla as being one of their top picks. They were so certain that it was an excellent investment that I decided I should buy some stock. The price of the stock was pretty high, which made me a bit nervous, but I was not investing a lot of money. I think I paid around $106 a share.
Some people, including my sister that worked for GM at the time, thought I was crazy for diving head first into a company that is relatively new. Plus the Model 3, which would not even be available to even see up close, wouldn't not see the rubber hit any roads until July of 2017. Test drives? Who needs test drives? What I saw happening with this company was so different than how any other company operated. Some people fear this. I felt it made them a disruptive force in the industry.
Elon Musk made many promises about this car, and although they have yet to produce the $35,000 220 mile range version, it has exceeded most peoples expectations. I joined Tesla group on Facebook, and found the Electric Vehicle Club of Colorado Springs. I watched what these folks were saying, and noticed that most of them had the same thoughts I did about the company.
Why have they been so slow to produce that $35,000 car? Well, the answer is all in technology development and economics. This car simplifies so many things that existing car makers insist on making complex. But in developing the technology there are R&D costs that cause the car to cost a bit too much.
One of the things that surprised me is that the car starts off being a REAR wheel drive car. I am not sure what the thinking was there, but it made me hold off on my actual configuration order until the all-wheel drive version was available. I live in Colorado, so I know that driving a rear wheel drive vehicle can have troubles with the rolling hills along the front range of the Rockies. Unfortunately that meant I needed to pay more than I was originally planning.
Another thing that bothered me on this journey was all the negative articles about Tesla. It seems every time a Tesla got into an accident it made the news. One of the reasons for the magnified focus was that Tesla cars are supposed to be the most safest cars on the planet. The accidents that were occurring had more to do with bad drivers, than a bad car, but the finely focused eyes on the Tesla cars meant that people were going to hear more about them in the good areas, and the bad. It didn't seem to matter that people were just being stupid. The blame was partially being put on Tesla's lap. Then I found that some if not most of these articles were being written by people that were shorting the Tesla stock. This started to irritate me beyond belief.
Regardless, the stock price kept going up.
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