We have already mentioned a strange obsession phenomenon shorters have for Tesla. People that seem to want to make money by watching the company crumble. But Jack Rickard has a different theory on these guys. They would not be simply beings after profit at the expense of others’ failures. They would be part of a conspiracy to make Tesla falter or die, simply put. And Rickard has strong arguments to support that hypothesis.
It is always a good idea to read the article in full and also to watch the video above, made by the YouTube channel “Now You Know”, but we can also summarize it for you here.
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Rickard starts by telling about the huge success Tesla is doing on the market. One of the reasons he stopped making EV conversions, since they had no point anymore, in his opinion.
That happened because Tesla is currently doing electric vehicles that are much better and much cheaper than anything EVTV could create for the same amount of money. The Model S has recently been nominated as the Ultimate Car Of The Year by Motor Trend. The Model 3 has received lots of international prizes, including the 2019 Auto Express Car Of The Year.
That is just the recognition from the critics. What about numbers? Even if Tesla is still fighting to turn a profit consistently, the company would not have cash problems, according to Rickard. He says it can easily raise credit whenever it wants. Sales have increased 679 percent in four years, or 170 percent every year.
With all that success, why would anyone bet against the company? According to Rickard, because Tesla is a very inconvenient disruptive enterprise. We are not speaking about the times it was not very nice to its consumers but rather about being inconvenient to two very powerful industries: oil and regular carmakers.
While the latter is still trying to catch up – what shows the movement towards electric mobility is inevitable – they would benefit if Tesla was not going so well as to not even need to spend on advertising to sell whatever it produces.
Oil companies, on the other hand, would be happy to stop electric cars. Rickard claims they always pay for studies that determine EVs are also polluting devices and have enough money to buy technologies just to put them to sleep.
Rickard even remembers when Texaco bought the GM Ovonics Battery System, based on nickel-metal hydride batteries. This is what he says about the business:
“They allowed this battery chemistry for camera and laptop batteries, but specifically REFUSED to license it to anyone in larger sizes suitable for electric cars and that continued until the patents ran out. By then it didn’t matter, the lithium battery was ascendant. But it absolutely delayed the development of electric vehicles by many years.
Stanford Ovshinsky, inventor of this nickel-metal-hydride battery died in 2012 at the age of 89 still deeply embittered by what General Motors and Texaco, later acquired by Chevron, had done to his baby. It’s greatest potential use and the use Ovshinsky specifically developed it for was never realized. They simply bought it and shelved it.”
Rickard’s text goes in much more detail. Although most companies have people betting on their failure, "NO company in the HISTORY of the stock market has ever carried 34 percent short sale", according to his text. Why so many wish that it sinks? They would be stupid to expect to make money against a company that has everything to succeed. Unless they were not expecting to make money. And that is what Rickard believes that is happening.
In his text, he shows how a $2.75 billion per day business would probably be willing to spend a few billion dollars to hamper or even kill another one that will eventually have theirs killed. Both with cars and natural gas peaker plants.
What will oil companies do to prevent that? Convert fuel stations into hydrogen production stations in order to feed FCEVs and still release CO2 that was imprisoned for millions of years in the atmosphere?
Some companies that state to sell energy, not oil, are investing in second-generation ethanol made from biomass instead of sugarcane and corn to keep cars burning something renewable. But most of them will probably just try to keep ICE cars burning fossil fuels for as long as possible. That would not be an investment. It would simply be an expense, according to Rickard.
This is why his hypothesis makes sense. And why he fears he may even get killed for saying these things on oil companies and also on SEC, which would be allowing oil companies to try to harm Tesla with shorters.
We don’t know about the murder part, but lawsuits could certainly follow. SEC went after Elon Musk for a lot less. Rickard does not seem to be afraid of them. Whether he is right or wrong, it is always interesting to discuss why so many want Tesla to fall. Pure self-interest or is there something bigger behind that? This is what Rickard believes. Feel free to tell us what you think about that as well.
Gallery: Are Shorters Part Of A Conspiracy To Kill Tesla? Why This Makes Sense