Electric cars (how to lie with numbers)

Yes, folks at the Tesla forum are very familiar with this clown. It is amusing sometimes to watch a 3 card Monte professional at work.

 

Petersen is of course a rabid EV skeptic, but he is very knowledgeable about batteries and technology. His points are often good ones, even if he is off the mark sometimes. I've posted his coments here many times, with the caveat he is EV skeptic. Several years ago he stopped writing blogs for AltEnergyStocks. com so I do not post his comments as much anymore.

 

He may have good points, but he really has gone off the deep end the last couple of years.
Last year he was positive Axion Power stock would be priced higher than TSLA.
TSLA is currently worth well over 1000 times AXPW.

Advanced lead batteries are great to replace current lead car batteries, but his lack of understanding of why EVs are so appealing is leading him to poor conclusions?

 

...do not know...but he is a big fan of Prii.

 

He has been spouting off against tesla since it was 30 as being over valued. He claims he understands the technology, but he really doesn't. It is likely he lost a great deal of money shorting tesla, as did people following his advice. Instead of realizing that he has been wrong at every turn, peterson is doubling down. Seeking alpha is an investment site, but it does not rank contributers by how much misguided bad advice they give.

There is a difference between being a skeptic - and a voice claiming demise of the stock of a wall street darling. Take the numbers as you will about his knowledge. Tesla at 30 is over valued then it must be overvalued at 171. If you say that it won't sell 5000 cars in 2013, then you have to believe that 20K is impossible.

The crux of his argument now is that people buy teslas to reduce ghg (wrong, but that happens) and parts will not be recycled. The next logical falicy is that if you build more solar in california and a tesla, that a guy in china will just use the oil and coal that you didn't use. Also wrong.

 

...I don't fiddle much with stocks as far as personal ownership...but I read up on how the green tech is doing sometimes

 

That is a good attitude, but seeking alpha is all about stocks, not green tech. In Peterson's drive to support other stocks, that have done relatively poorly, he has taken a more and more strange and completely wrong view of tech. From his opinion post he talks about plug-ins, solar, and hawaii.

Hawaii is one of those places where plug-ins make the least sense, and solar will grow rapidly with grid expansion. If they can get smart grid, and v2grid then future plug-ins may greatly reduce imported oil, but that tech is not there today. Cherry picking a bad example is how you lose money at stocks, and misunderstand tech.

GHG reduction from plug-ins in the next decade will indeed be small. Substitution away from oil, and from gas stations, are a much better reason to get a plug-in than ghg reduction. Initial adopters that value ghg reduction also are buying wind or solar with their plug-in.

 

This Peterson is the same person who wrote "no-big-deal" pearls of wisdom about BP's gulf oil spill:

Putting BP's Macondo Disaster in Perspective - John Petersen - Seeking Alpha

so what do you expect
.

 

He is absolutely right, if we continue to let companies like bp act the way they do, disasters will happen Its not nearly as big of a deal as the gulf war burning the oil fields.

Then again, if we think, those were very stupid things that could have been prevented, Mr. Petersen I guess was hawking BP stock at the time. Pulling up the price from the date of the article it is up 36% from that day. Which might sound good, but say you owned a less evil integrated oil like chevron (that's the evil big oil I own) its up 62% in the same time period.

I guess that shows that the non-evil oil company is more likely to pay back its share holders. tesla? Since Jon Peterson wrote that is up before tesla went public but if you had bought it after the offering bump it is up 782%.