Hey Dude, Where's My Documentary Part 2. Elon Musk, Tesla and the Alternative Energy Revolution

     

      By the spring of the year 2013, it looked like a company called Tesla might just be able to buck the alternative energy trend. The company, named after the famous Serbian inventor who immigrated to the United States in the late 19^th century only to learn that big money fat cats like Thomas Edison and J.P. Morgan were interested more in accumulating vast fortunes by sucking every dime and nickel they could get out the pockets of the consumer, than in creating Nikola Tesla's idea of free and available electrical energy for the people of the world. In no small sense of irony, a century later, it was this same kind of fat cat who had made his money from PayPal transactions that would use Nikola Tesla's name (although members of the 80's rock band might still deny this) to create a car or rather an electric vehicle that would no longer be the laughingstock of the auto world and of the auto purchasing consumer.

     Enter Elon Musk, the self-styled rock star of the entrepreneurial world. Like Nikola Tesla, Musk immigrated to the U.S. to pursue a dream. Unlike Nikola Tesla, Elon Musk's entry into the United States was with a fortune of billions of dollars backing him up that assured the immediate respect and adoration of the business world and Wall Street's pay-for-praise pundits. Surprisingly, after a shaky start, the company seemed to be weathering the storm of criticism and naysayers who said that his company would suffer the same fate as those who had tried to fly in the face of the American auto  and oil companies in the past. With his billions to back him, it seemed that Elon Musk and his idea of a car company might be for real.

      By 2013, Tesla's stock price grew from $25 per-share at the end of 2012 and the beginning of the new year  to double and then triple. By the summer of 2013 Tesla stock had reach that magical pinnacle of $100 a share. Already, there were a number of investors who had made fortunes as they doubled and then tripled their money as Tesla stock began  to climb in an unparalleled bonanza hardly seen since the days of Apple and Microsoft. 

     But all was not as it seemed, as many of the so-called experts who published articles about stocks on the Internet began to compare Elon Musk to the emperor riding naked through town in his electric S carriage. Pundits at the Wall Street adjective mills like the Motley Fool and Zack's said that Tesla stock was way over sold and that the crash was coming any day. Obviously, nobody wanted to be left holding the bag at such an obvious replay of the First Solar alternative energy company fiasco of 2008.

     However, there were a few billion reasons that made Elon Musk different from so many others who tried in the past to fly in the face of the auto and oil corporations. Elon's company SpaceX, an ambitious "private" enterprise space exploration company has as a client, the United States government, which guarantees him billions as long as he can keep getting the government to renew his contract. With some of his billions placed in the re-election pockets of the Congressmen who make those decisions, why shouldn't he? Of course, PayPal was doing a booming business as the main commercial purchasing and selling platform for buyers and sellers operating in the global marketplace. Finally, his stake in Solar City, a residential solar cell installer that sells solar panels to homeowners in a scheme where the excess power generated is sold back to the power company and Solar City, not the homeowner who paid for the panels, keeps the profits. SpaceX, Paypal and finally, Solar City assured that regardless of what happened with his Electric Motor Company, Elon Musk's risks would be tempered and his financial success would continue unimpeded.

     Throughout the summer of 2013, Tesla stock made incredible gains followed by drops in the price that made some investors (like myself) quite nervous. The stock rose above $100 for the first time and continued to climb.  But there were bumps in the road. The bounce came when auto dealers began to approach their state legislatures and asked that Tesla not be allowed to sell cars in states such as South Carolina. The Tesla business model, based on the idea that cars would not be sold from lots but would be delivered in person to the owner, seemed to fly in the face of the automakers even more than manufacturing a car that ran on alternative energy and was not a complete joke to the American consumer. But somehow, Elon Musk seemed to weather that storm as his sleek cars continued to be sold and his lawyers used whatever means necessary to keep his cars for sale in states where they were challenged and the price of his stock somehow kept rising.
     There were other bumps, such as the reports of fires that started in the battery section and consumer complaints of the amount of time it took to recharge the batteries compared to a gasoline powered car. Consumers also complained about the battery life of the vehicle as well as the Tesla method of driving into a recharging station and completely changing out the heavy batteries for new ones. All of these seeming problems associated with the Tesla automobile did not seem to affect the sale of either the vehicle or the stock price and the price of Tesla stock continue to climb throughout the rest of the year 2013.

     And so, the Bonanza in at least one alternative energy stock seemed to be real and as solid as Microsoft or Apple. Suddenly, everybody who missed the Tesla electric boat looked for the next alternative energy stock that would go through the roof and make a new breed of alternative energy millionaires. Enter hydrogen fuel cells; the technology that had been sitting on the back burner for over a decade and finally seemed to be coming to life as investors, looking to cash in on the next alternative energy boom, began taking note.

Please tune in for next segment the hydrogen fuel cell stock scam of 2014.

For books by Matthew D. Heines please go to www.heinessight.com.