Whatâs Going On Here?Tesla showed off its latest car â the Model S Plaid â at a flashy event late last week, and itâs fast. Really fast. Like, this has never happened to Tesla. Honest. What Does This Mean?Investors have known about the Model S Plaid for a while, but this was a chance for Tesla to really show off its performance. And it was worth showing off: the car can go from nought to 60 in under two seconds â faster than modern F1 cars â and has an estimated range of 390 miles. And since that pushes electric vehicle performance even further forward, Teslaâs innovations should bring the rest of the industry along for the ride. Why Should I Care?For markets: Teslaâs back, baby. Tesla sells far more of its cheaper models than its expensive ones, but the latter make a big difference to the companyâs profitability. That might be why Tesla announced itâd be upping the Model S Plaidâs mooted $120,000 price tag by $10,000. And considering itâs expecting to sell 1,000 a week next quarter, that translates to an annualized revenue rate â that is, if you applied the data across a whole year â of almost $7 billion. Thatâs especially significant when you remember that Teslaâs forecasted revenue for the year is $50 billion, and it could help reverse its stockâs bad run of form: itâs underperformed US stocks by 25% in 2021.
Zooming out: Bitcoin canât catch a break. Tesla recently dealt bitcoin a blow by announcing itâd no longer accept it as payment, and the OG cryptocurrency suffered another setback late last week: an influential regulator proposed classifying bitcoin as the riskiest of assets for banks to hold. The good news is that the proposal acknowledges banks can hold bitcoin, but the bad news is that itâd force them to have a potentially prohibitive amount of cash as backup: one dollar for every dollarâs worth of bitcoin. |