Whitney Tilson’s email to investors discussing Gary Black on Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA)’s China demand; Toyota Motor Corp (NYSE:TM) can be a tech giant too; the autonomous vehicle world is shrinking – it’s overdue; some of 2020’s biggest market influencers take a stumble.
Q1 2021 hedge fund letters, conferences and more
Tesla's China Demand
1) Gary Black seems to have some inside information (link to tweet here):
Toyota Can Be A Tech Giant Too
2) Pretty much every major auto company in the world is making a huge push into EVs. Here’s a WSJ article about Toyota: Toyota Can Be a Tech Giant Too. Excerpt:
The Japanese auto maker hasn’t attracted the same excitement around its electric-vehicle plans as the likes of General Motors and Volkswagen, but in some respects it is technologically ahead.
The Autonomous Vehicle World Is Shrinking - It’s Overdue
3) EVs are booming, but AVs are sucking wind: The autonomous vehicle world is shrinking — it’s overdue. Excerpt:
After years of positive vibes about the future of autonomous vehicles and nearly unrestricted access to cash from Kool-Aid-drunk venture capitalists, the AV industry is confronting some hard truths. The first is that autonomous vehicles are going to take a lot longer to reach mass scale than previously thought. The second is that it’s going to be a lot more expensive, too. And the third hard truth: going it alone is no longer a viable option.
Last week, Lyft sold its self-driving car division to a subsidiary of Toyota for $550 million. Cruise bought Voyage. Aurora merged with Uber’s autonomous vehicle unit. Delivery robot startup Nuro acquired self-driving truck outfit Ike. There have been so many mergers, joint ventures, and various tie-ups lately it can be difficult to keep them all straight.
Some Of 2020's Biggest Market Influencers Take A Stumble
4) My colleague Berna Barshay wrote about Musk, Wood, and Palihapitaya in her free investing daily yesterday (you can sign up for it here):
Influencer culture became a mainstay of fashion, music, and gaming years ago, but 2020 is when market cheerleaders really broke out as social media stars…
Call it a combination of people getting bored during COVID-19, markets on fire, more time spent online, and some very astute social media self-promotion. Whether it was intentional (I tend to think it was), a new class of celebrity market influencers emerged last year on Twitter, YouTube, and more traditional media outlets.
I’ve written about two of them before… “SPAC King”/Social Capital founder Chamath Palihapitiya and “Reigning Queen of the Markets”/ARK Invest head Cathie Wood. Rounding out the triumvirate of social media stars is Tesla (TSLA) and SpaceX founder Elon Musk, someone who I have refrained from writing about because there isn’t much I can to add to the reams that have been written about his every move.
The trio are champions of innovation and future technologies, as well as masters of crafting media-friendly personas, which have propelled them to cult-like status, and a place in the mainstream consciousness usually only attained by celebrities from the worlds of entertainment, sports, and music. The trio has inspired fan merch such as this shirt, which I think I mentioned before… but I mention again, because it still kind of shocks me that it exists…
Continue reading the full article here.
