“Once every decade, there’s a seismic shift in technology ー usually in the form of a new innovation ー that reshapes how we live, said venture capitalist Gene Munster,” Carlo Versano reports for Cheddar. “‘There’s always little waves going on in tech, but every 10 years or so there’s a big wave that hits,’ Munster, a managing partner at Loup Ventures, said Wednesday in an interview on Cheddar.”
“There was the smartphone in the mid-aughts, following the widespread adoption of the world wide web. Before that, the PC. Munster said we’re now in the early stages of the latest changes in tech: the emergence of A.I., robotics, autonomous vehicles, and augmented and virtual reality. Our lives, he said, will be manifestly different. And Munster’s firm recently launched a new ETF to expose investors to that theory,” Versano reports. “The Loup Frontier Tech ETF will contain a basket of relatively small, highly innovative tech companies with market caps in the $500 million to $2 billion range, Munster said.”
“For now, Munster wants to prioritize smaller stocks, but there’s one major exception: the ETF does hold shares of Tesla,” Versano reports. “Why does the $50 billion-plus company fit the strategy? Munster said Tesla, despite its public dramas, has ‘the greatest product road map of any tech company.’ He added that CEO Elon Musk has built a business that is uniquely positioned to leverage renewable energy, the storage of that energy, and the combined trends of zero-emissions and autonomy in automobiles.”
“And what about Apple, flush with all that cash, making a play for Tesla? Munster said it isn’t out of the question. Both companies have a shared ideology based on a love of design; and Apple has long been trying to enter the EV market with its Project Titan electric car,” Versano reports. “‘It’s always been a fairy tale that Apple and Tesla are going to find a way to get together,’ he said.
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: “Fairy tale” is an interesting choice of words. It can mean something “magical, idealized, or extremely happy,” i.e. a fairy-tale romance or it can mean “a fabricated story, especially one intended to deceive.”
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Edward W.” for the heads up.]
Besides buying up all the employees? Once you have all the people you’ve got all the IP!
… BUT, then “you have all the problems and work to be done … which is REALLY hard work.
It would be very stupid since Tesla does not make money.
The dirty secret is that without large government subsidies Tesla, and electric cars in general, are not cost effective. Of course, they are very popular with Democrats who love other people paying for their stuff and who also like the idea of saving the planet. When they are not jetting around the world.
Solar, Wind, Geo-thermal, all now part of the present and future, put down by Coal, and Oil conservatives, Electric is the future and Red States won’t be able to stop it.
Let’s be honest with ourselves. There are only two sources of energy that have the capacity to power our world.
1. Fossil Fuel. We can power the entire world with Oil, gas, coal. etc. with no other sources of energy.
2. Nuclear Power. We can also power the entire world with Nuclear power and Electric cars, etc with no other sources of energy.
That’s it.
So anyone who is in the Wind, Solarl, GeoThermal, etc is by default in the Fossil Fuel camp. We cannot power our entire world with Solar and Wind. No way, no how. Not in our lifetimes, Not Ever!
So lets be honest with ourselves and each other. Oil companies love Solar because it will have no effect on their business.
Whether we like it or not, these are our choices so lets have an honest discussion and stop living in a make believe world.
Which will it be?
Disclosure: I once worked at Indian Point Nuclear Power facility and I also worked for a Gas Pipeline company.
There is a new power on the horizon that is only 13 or so years old.
Genergy. Gravity-powered hydroelectric via submerged power generator. It can power a city with one eight story tower with water and buoyancy.
Check it out! Genergy LLC.
I believe Thorium Energy is the future. Clean nuclear, you can’t make weapons, it can’t melt down, and amazingly–it can burn the old radioactive waste created by the Uranium reactors.
Westinghouse is about 3 years into a 5 year test of Thorium Nuclear power.
for more info:
http://www.ThoriumEnergyAlliance.com
Fossil Fuel Corporations have been subsidized for decades & still get huge tax breaks from our Government. They are not competing equally in the Marketplace at all. If they were on their own gas would too expensive to buy & Big Oil would fade away like the dinosaurs that made the crude.
Grasshopper: it often takes wisdom to know when NOT to do something.
No. (See Betteridge’s Law.)
You beat me to it by two minutes. Part of that was because I double checked my sources and had looked to see if anybody had already mentioned Betteridge – which you hadn’t at that point.
Great minds and all that …
Betteridges Law of Headlines states that any headline ending with a question mark can be answered with a “no”. This is a perfect example.
Gosh, I hope not! Apple buying Tesla would be a disaster!
I can see it now – the Model S will be phased out, the Model 3 will be over $100,000, and the Model X will be allowed to exist along with promises that it will be modernized ‘soon’.
Meanwhile, the officers of the company will proudly show us drone video of the fancy new Tesla headquarters.
Tesla is toast once Toyota gets into the game. Toyota has a decades long strategy for EVs but won’t go mainstream with it until the tech is ready. Tesla should do fine as a high end niche player but it is a company like Toyota that is going to take EVs mainstream. Tesla’s manufacturing processes aren’t even in the same league as Toyota’s.
As of today, Toyota is not getting into the game so your comment is fantasy. They have massive sunk cost in ICE manufacturing that absolutely will need to be written off in a future electric world and the bulk of their R&D is sunk in hydrogen cars which will never in a million years take off. Toyota had a chance when they previously partnered with and invested inTesla but they ended that years ago and took another path.
Toyota is one of the best at making the equivalent of horse drawn buggies but they don’t seem all that interested in the change that they would require in order to be excellent at making vehicles of the future.
So your future is electric cars powered by coal and natural gas (both carbon based) since liberals like to drive when the sun is not shining and the wind is nowhere to be found.
Solar. Solar. Solar. Power Wall. Solar
Toyota buying Tesla: not pocket change, but pocket lint. Even then, no, not even worth the cost of the paperwork.
You are both ignorant and uninformed. Toyota is manufacturing EVs and Hybrids on the same lines as ICE autos. BMW is doing the same thing. Your sunk cost theory is a myth dreamed up by Tesla fans. Toyota has been working on EV tech for decades already but the tech isn’t ready yet for anything but niche application. When it is ready Toyota will go full out with it. That won’t happen for at least another five years. But sure, if it helps you sleep at night tell yourself Toyota doesn’t have a chance.
BTW, Toyota ended their partnership with Tesla because it became clear how poor Tesla was at both the software side of things (see recent information from a Tesla software developer) AND the manufacturing side of things. What Tesla is doing cannot scale and Tesla seems to be too proud to admit they have gone down the wrong path.
More news out recently about Tesla and what a MESS their manufacturing is. Tesla is worse than I thought. I knew from many reliable sources Tesla was bad at building cars at scale, but I had no idea it was this bad. Building a low number of cars is easy. Doing that at scale is beyond Tesla’s capabilities at this point. It is hilarious how much of a nightmare Tesla is. You couldn’t pay me to drive one of their newer cars.
electric cars (which today mostly run from electricity from oil or coal firing plants) are all very interesting , carbon reduction is interesting but most of it won;t matter much if we don’t deal with the way bigger issue which is population growth.
In a few decades there will be 2 billion more people , i.e equal to 6 USAs. The growth is about a million a week or about a New York sized city of people every few months. This is not sustainable.
Cutting carbon a bit won;t matter much as all the forests would be gone. A lot of chaos today is caused by overpopulation resulting in destruction of forests, microclimatic changes leading to desertification resulting in collapse of economies, war , refugees etc.
I’ve been third world countries where the entire sky from horizon to horizon is smogged with smoke from burning rainforests being cleared for development. You can drive for hours and the smoke is there, a tropical day and you can’t see the sun. ( note forests absorb carbon….)
Governments (mostly in debt) love bigger populations as it increases the tax base, that’s why they encourage immigration, and why the Japanese Prime minister is urging Japanese to have more babies, one third world country i was in the Prime Ministers aim was to increase his financially broke nation from 30 million to 70 million people to ‘grow the economy’. Add all these to the various religions opposition to birth control…. (Btw Climate scientists make money from ‘carbon research ’ grants and not population control….)
One new million person city a week , does anybody think this is survivable? yet we spend all our time fighting over small reductions in carbon yet spend no effort curbing population growth, this is extinction level problem, electric cars are a pea shooter against a Tsunami….
People focus on the environmental angle to Tesla’s far too much in my opinion. If it works for them though, great.
Personally I bought mine because they are insanely fun and nice to drive. Nothing else on the road compares to it today. Smooth, fast, quiet, autopilot driver assist, regular software updates with added new features and functions over time for free, free electricity from supercharging for life (Model S and the new performance Model 3) and so on. Safest car on the road too on every measured dimension. After more than two years owning one (now two cars), I smile every time I get in the car to drive, even when going to work or having to take long trips. It’s a gleeful experience every time.
They are worth every penny for every bit of pleasure they are to operate. That’s why I’d encourage someone to consider a Tesla at least, FWIW.
I smile every time the misguided gets in an electric car to drive, totally oblivious that the energy is produced by coal and other fossil fuels. Not to mention crappy battery technology that is disposed in landfills. You were sold a bill of goods by self serving lobbyists. Do gooders are so easily led by the nose.
HYDROGEN IS THE REAL GREEN DREAM …
I couldn’t give a crap (for the most part) what powers the electricity used to power the car. I’m not a liberal greenie. Read again…I bought it because it is undeniably the best vehicle ever created by human beings. It is unbelievably fun to drive. Get over yourself and stop assuming people would only drive these because of environmental reasons. Gas cars are simply rotting corpse dinosaurs by comparison.
I just think everyone (even the curmudgeons) should experience the pure joy of driving it every day.
“Gas cars are simply rotting corpse dinosaurs by comparison.”
No rotting, just run the numbers. BTW, HYDROGEN is the green dream …
Homework makes you schmahter. 🙂 Hydrogen may be a green dream but it sucks for transportation on many fronts (production, efficiency and distribution are just a few). Batteries work just fine and BEVs have already started being mass produced today. That train left the station me thinks.
Why is it that every time I point to EVs being fun to drive…someone keeps wanting to have an argument about environmental crap. Are you not getting the point that the driving experience with an electric motor is much improved over a gas car?
‘people focus’….
actually it’s Elon Musks main argument why he’s building electric cars and why the govt. is subsidizing it
your statement to my post is sideways
it’s like a guy saying “i think the lose weight reasoning for diet coke is overstated, I just drink it because i love that aspartame taste!”
that might be true but that’s not the corporate reason or their sales pitch which is ‘diet coke less calories lose weight’
seriously you guys don’t get it
my thrust is that governments subsidizes electric cars to the tune of billlions because of the environment, scientists talk electric because of the ‘carbon’ issue to save the planet etc yet does practically nothing about the real planet killer which is population growth . One million people i.e ONE EXTRA SAN FRANCISCO sized city a WEEK (btw together with even larger areas for farming etc) is not sustainable.
barely any discussion anywhere about it, nobody , no government, pressure group etc is seriously addressing the population issue YET you guys want to segue my post, (one of the few who even bring this up anywhere) — this is possible world destruction we’re talking about – segue it to discuss how much you enjoy driving a Tesla ? (you think i’m criticizing people owning Tesla’s?)
Fine if you like toasters. I’ll take my loud ass ICE for the visceral enjoyment it provides. Fast and loud, not quiet. People notice me, you don’t get noticed in a toaster.
This is the same thing Thomas Malthus said about 200 years ago. Baloney then and baloney now.
i guess you are replying to my post
so you think 1 million plus extra people a week or more than one new San Francisco ( est 800,000 pop ) a week is sustainable?
50+ EXTRA San Francisco sized cities every year, year after year is ok?
explain to me where they are going to build, get fuel, etc?
many places even in the developed USA is running out of water etc. now.
in 1900 (200 years ago) the population was 1.6 billion.
If Apple does it right, and odds are they will, their CUV or SUV, whatever type of vehicle they come out with, it’ll attract a lot of would-be Tesla buyers.
Tesla owners aren’t likely to be swayed, they are loyalists, but those that have not purchased yet, that use Apple gear, that are Apple loyalists, yah, those folks are probably off the table for Tesla sales – which were a nice chunk of whom they sold too.
Apple need not buy Tesla to take share and customers and grow. In fact, once Apple launches and Tesla get dinged, it could put Tesla under pretty quickly.
Tesla has competition from Russia with this cute, retro electric car. Don’t dismiss Russian technology.
Notice the Kalashnikovs on the racks. The Kalashnikov Co. makes the CV-1 too. Its minimalist style reminds me of Apple’s products.
Apple and Tesla are a marriage made in heaven. They both arrogantly overprice everything to people who want to be cool. iPhones are within reach of many; everything else, not so much. The model 3 looks affordable until you option it up past $50k. If Apple thinks they can build a car from the ground up, with all the gewgaws and gadgets that need to be thought through, well, good luck Timster.
Tesla without Elon Musk is worthless. Musk has to be in charge or he would be gone. The pairing can’t work.
Betcha I can get from LA to Vegas in my ICE faster than a damn electric car. I won’t get stuck in the middle of the desert waiting for a recharge to complete, if they even have chargers out there.
Trondud’s wise words of wisdom strike out as being complete Bs, yet again
There’s a very obvious reason why your name is Trondud.
Comments here from Tesla’s haters ring as false as those from all the Apple-hating Windows fanboys who used to post here. Just fistfighting the future. And maybe paid for by…
Articulating constructive problems with Tesla and Apple is NOT hate. It’s called being an adult, not a BLIND follower …
blind arrogant Trumpanzee