Since the announcement of BMW’s new i3 electric vehicle, some have said that Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) should be scared. On Tuesday Citron Research tweeted that it was shorting Tesla and intimated that the BMW i3 is the real car of the future.
Tesla bulls respond to Citron
The firm believes that expectations for future Tesla vehicles are just too bullish, but fans of Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) aren’t buying it. Benzinga’s Matthew Kanterman covered some of the comments from Tesla fans who reacted to the Citron report. In fact, some of them even called Citron a “lemon,” which of course is used to describe a used car with a lot of problems.
Those comments raised the hackles of Andrew Left of Citron, who commented on the site that “anyone who is naïve enough to believe that their [Tesla’s] stock has the right to go up should not be in the stock market and is a hazard to themselves.”
BMW not a threat to Tesla
Earlier this week Jim Cramer said he thinks there is room for both Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s and BMW’s electric vehicles on the market and that BMW doesn’t pose much of a threat to Tesla. Will Oremus of Slate noted on Monday that the new i3 really doesn’t appear to be in the same class as the Model S, and his headline said it all: “BMW’s New Electric Car Is Just Like a Tesla, Only Much, Much Worse.”
He notes that the i3 “has the range of a Chevy Volt and the looks of a Pontiac Aztek.” Also it only has seating for four people. The Model S, on the other hand, has a range that’s getting close to 300 miles and can seat seven people. It’s also got some big-time class, which arguably, the i3 just doesn’t have.
Of course i3 buyers could always add on a gas motor along with the vehicle because BMW offers that option, but then what you have isn’t a fully electric vehicle at all.
Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) is clearly still in a class of its own, whether you like the company’s current stock price or not. By the way, as of this writing, shares were up another 1.46 percent.
