Morgan stanley says tesla now the most important car company

A decade ago Toyota was the most important car company, with the gen II prius as its halo.

Now a new leader looks like it has appeared.
Morgan Stanley: Tesla Is Now "Most Important Car Company In The World"

IMHO if it can successfully make the gen III at $40K or below, and get its gigafactory running then it really will be the most important car company in the world. Those two things are difficult, but I think they can get them done. There is no old thinking dealership network that the company needs to cater to, no legacy old engineers, that believe in engines over electronics. Even nissan has these stumbling blocks, though many more resources.

 

Yes....

part of their reasoning about other big autos not being as important is their opinion on what is driving fcvs.

Batteries battle fuel cells, leaving plug-in hybrids to prosper | The Detroit News

 

If you had been reading their reports, they most definitely are not pro-CARB regulation (ZEV) or do they give optimistic projections for the EV market as a whole.

Morgan Stanley Tesla Update - Business Insider

That 10% estimate came from nissan, and if you were an EVangelist you would be pushing nissan.

Morgan Stanely has been more right about tesla stock than any other analyst, but yes they have been pushing the stock since 2011. This is the first time they are claiming most important car company, but in the report last year, one risk was running out of cash. The bond offering for the gigafactory raised cash quite cheaply indicating if they need more cash they can simply offer more bonds. Morgan stanley was the underwriter for those bonds, so they did make money on the tesla relationship, but their clients also made money.

If you believe the MS take on the car market, bevs will remain only a tiny part of that market for the next decade, but tesla can make a lot of money in that part of the market. They don't view FCV as anything other than compliance cars, so they will only be sold in a much smaller niche of a small geographic area for the next decade. PHEVs, hybrids, and conventional ice vehicles will be the majority of the market.

The morgan stanley estimate is 220,000 teslas being produced a year in 2020. They should do around 35,000 this year. If the US is 50% of sales that is 110,000 cars, or about 0.7% of the US market. That needs a very good gen III, but it certainly is a realistic goal. China should be a bigger market for plug-ins than the us in 2019 (again market analyst), and if tesla can sell well there.... they could be doing 300,000 cars in 2020 if gigafactory gets costs low enough, and the gen III is good enough. Tesla should also profit from their deal with mercedes, and should be able to sell batteries to other car companies, and for grid storage.

 

Here you go -
Tesla is now most important automaker in world, Morgan Stanley says - LA Times

In may analysis MS had tesla at 220,000 cars in 2020, and bevs 1% of world wide sales.

That makes most of the growth after 2020, driven in part by better batteries we develop in the next few years.

MS near term analysis of bevs is based on costs of the leaf, focus ev, fiat 500 ev. With today's battery costs, if you are trying to be cost competitive with the main stream corollas, camry's and , range won't be good enough. Tesla isn't trying to make an electric corrolla. Its making a great desireable car, that happens to be electric. The S and X and gen III will get sold to people that don't really care about pollution, but do care about how cool the silent fast electric car is.

MS didn't comment on Lithioum checmistry having limitations, that was the MIT materials proffessor. Tesla does need batteries to improve to grow its market share, and as the biggest buyer of batteries it can push this to happen. Right now its lithium ion and aluminum air (range extender recyclable battery), but nothing in tesla's business says they would not work just as well on new chemistries. Today's lithium ion are good enough today for 1% market share, but not the 10% nissan was claiming a few years ago.