Cars

Tesla Stock Buy or Sell?

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tesla-suv-model-x

Wall Street gave up giving honest buy and sell rankings years ago. Everyone knows “Hold” is code for sell, without making the company you are covering too mad to use your bank for future deals. But, even that wasn’t enough, with most firms adding a slew of not-so-easy to decode terms like overweight, moderate buy, underperform, underweight. All of this is to obfuscate the actual track record of these analysts which is often abysmal. The less accountability on Wall Street, the better. Is Tesla Stock a Good Buy? Traditionally, I don’t do buy/sell on stocks. It’s a slippery area, but when folks show up in my comments and email asking over and over again for the same thing, I at least consider it. Tesla and Bitcoin I’m writing about Tesla stock today, because I wrote about Bitcoin 20,000 last week (or was it the week before? — Holidays are tricky). Bitcoin and Tesla might sound unrelated, but their performance and trajectory as late are very similar. Bitcoin is a revolutionary idea in currency that is so new there is no real way to know how it will react or behave in the long term. Recently, however, all the naysayers have …

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Tesla Does Not Compete With Chevy and Nissan

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tesla model 3 vs leaf and bolt

Here, they come. It looks like the Nissan Leaf will be cheaper than a Tesla, so you know what that means. More articles where so-called analysts decry the prospects for the Tesla Model 3, because Chevy Bolt, and now Nissan, have cheaper electric cars available before the Model 3. This is dumb. Comparing Tesla Model 3 to Chevy Bolt is dumb. Comparing Tesla Model 3 to Nissan Leaf is dumb. Worrying about Tesla stock because less desired offerings are coming out with still less desired new models is dumb. (If you want to worry about Tesla stock, worry about the fact that they are always slower and later than they say. — Although I wouldn’t sell my stock…) The Spec Sheet Falsity Once upon a time, Consumer Reports poorly reviewed the Apple iPad. The reason? It compared specification sheets with other tablets, and the iPad had lower specs. Of course, this completely and utterly missed the point. Turns out that Consumer Reports always does this. I found out the hard way when we bought one of their “best buy” stoves only to find out that despite the great temperature readings they got on their laser thermometers, the flame pattern was …

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Tesla Cars Too Expensive?

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There is an article on the CNN website with the headline that T. Boone Pickens thinks Tesla cars are too expensive. The article really isn’t about that, and T. Boone (man, I really hope people call him T. Boone) only says that he thinks the next thing Elon Musk should do is make them cheaper, so that isn’t really the most on point of headlines, but it probably draws in more clicks. Tesla Pricing There are a couple of things about the article that are interesting. First, and foremost, T. Boone is an oil school oil man. Frankly, he’s probably the old schoolest of all oil men. He’s rich because of what he, himself, did in oil, not as a money guy or CEO, or anything else. He found it, drilled it and sold it. You would think the old school oil guy would have some sort of cheap shot about electric cars then. That isn’t true. He just thinks they are a little pricey. Otherwise, I think he knows they are the future, just not right now. The thing about the pricing of Teslas is that they are luxury, sport automobiles. They are that on purpose. You see, before …

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Can Car2Go Save You Money?

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I recently wrote a review of Car2Go Denver and someone asked if they could save money using Car2Go. The answer, as always, depends on your own personal finances and circumstances, but let’s take a look at how you might save money using Car2Go or another car sharing service. Car Sharing or Auto Sharing Keep in mind the difference between ride sharing and car sharing. With ride sharing, you ride in a car with someone else. With car sharing, you “share a car” with other people. While this is technically true, in reality what you are doing is renting a car by the minute. So, can a car sharing membership save you money? To find out, we need to know about the costs. Car2Go in Denver charges 38 cents per minute. This doesn’t sound like a lot, but it can add up quickly, especially if you end up driving during heavy traffic. For a quick 10 minute drive to the grocery store, a Car2Go rental costs you $3.80. Of course, you’ll have to get back home too, so we’ll call it $7.60, round trip. Not bad. Whether or not that will save you money is going to depend on your current …

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