Ron Baron Explains Why Tesla Has a Huge Opportunity

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Billionaire Ron Baron owns more than 1.6 million shares (via Baron Capital) of Tesla valued at $358 million.

Ron believes that Tesla will have $35-40 billion in revenue in 2020 and $100 billion by about 2022-2023. Last year, Ron predicted that Tesla would be worth $1 trillion in 2030.

He describes how the range of Tesla cars will be over 400 miles this year and battery packs for a car will soon drop to $5000 from $10000 now.

The current car makers are the best at making gas and diesel engines. However, shifting to battery cars will be very difficult for them.

SOURCES- CNBC, Ron Baron
Written By Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture.com

30 thoughts on “Ron Baron Explains Why Tesla Has a Huge Opportunity”

  1. Is that the only card you have left, racist? Just show to me what “gaucho” said is not true.
    You wallow in victimhood and want others to feel guilty.
    Just like today, the people who enslaved Africans were neither white nor Chinese, they were Africans.
    We read of white slave traders, but the slave catchers were your fellow Africans.

  2. I think I understand the situation quite well and don’t disagree with you at all, but a not very flattering reply of mine to “nigger” was lost or deleted and that makes my comment to you somewhat nonsensical.

  3. Are you looking for “foreign oppressors”? Because in general it isn’t the big foreign mining corporations directly oppressing the native workers – they have better ways to make a lot more money, though in some cases that likely involved upper management looking the other way as employees lined their own pockets by buying (indirectly) from the ‘artisanal’ miners.

    A lot of the artisanal mining started as a response to increasing cobalt demand, fast-rising cobalt prices, an official supply chain that couldn’t keep up with demand, and speculative buying of cobalt while prices were going up (i.e. a speculative bubble).

    So there was money to be made, and I suppose at first many diggers thought they were going to ‘get rich’ – and slave-taking local militias were able to get good money with slaves. ‘Smart’ opportunists (native and foreign) moved in to sell over-priced supplies and buy under-priced ore. And finally as the supply chain filled up again, prices collapsed, and the predatory businessmen just squeezed harder to keep the system going.

    The Congo government reportedly has recently used the military to sweep “illegal miners” out of the mining region. That won’t be a permanent solution, but perhaps it will improve things for the diggers who escaped the sweep.

    As cobalt demand continues to rise, we probably have only a few years to implement real systemic fixes, before abusive artisanal mining swells again.

  4. But who keeps the miners in these awful conditions?
    Recently demand for Cobalt has dropped, now miners are crying because they are loosing jobs.

  5. Removing cobalt is a great goal, and I look forward to confirmation that Tesla/Panasonic have achieved it.

    Even if achieved, global cobalt use likely won’t fall much though. If demand falls somewhat (rather than rising exponentially with electric car sales), there will be less reason for other battery makers to expend effort and money rushing to get rid of cobalt. If people of the world care about working conditions in the Congo, battery advances aren’t going to fix them.

    And of course, if the illegal mining operations in Congo are somehow shut down, that will leave the diggers unemployed, including many who were just struggling to get by, rather than actual slaves.

  7. I own a Tesla, love it, won’t drive an ice again. Your theory of what the general population does or will believe is not right.
    If that is your belief then I hope for all our sakes you promote nuclear power.

  8. My big surprise was the Rover 75.

    As a car it was heavy, soft, and they only installed an engine barely powerful enough to be the starter motor for a real engine.

    But the interior? At least when new it was distinctly nicer (to my taste) than a top of the line 650 SL Mercedes.

    The other one I loved was the 1st generation Audi TT. I liked the exterior on that one too.

  9. For an actually nuanced response: ICEs/hybrids will be regulated away over the next 10-20 years. I don’t give a shit whether or not you believe in climate change, an overwhelming and growing number of Americans (or, likely, whatever country you’re from) trust the science on climate change, and so that’s where policy is going and will go.

  11. Yeah that is really really subjective. I’ve liked interiors of cars that aren’t really similar or even in the same price class. Short list of cars owned by me, first order relatives and close friends or extended rentals that I’ve driven with great interiors

    Audi S6 2008
    Honda S2000 2005
    Tesla Model 3 2018
    Mazda 3 2015
    Buick Encore 2017? (not sure rental)
    Volkswagen GTI 2012

    I also really like the new mid engine Corvette interior but haven’t driven it.

    I’ve also driven Mercedes, BMW, Lexus and others; they don’t really do it for me.

    If forced to pick a winner the Audi. The surprise was the Mazda 3 with leather; so so nice inside.

  13. Unless somebody invents a cheap nuclear reactor the size of a coffee can, or we figure out how to draw massive energy from the ether, BEVs will lose out to hybrids. Toyota will continue to lead the way. ICEs are far more versatile than batteries will ever be.

    Ultimately, hydrogen hybrids are the future.

  15. zee,

    IF,

    carmakers could simply remove the ICE and replace it with an electric motor, they would, but they can’t.
    Existing manufacturers will have to start over and design/build an entire new electric platform, just like tesla di.
    Not saying they can’t, but,
    As of today, they are woefully behind

  16. You are trying to use logic with someone who thinks that ebola and aids were deliberate conspiracies.

    Either that or someone who pretends to think that, because in real life someone like that is going to have trouble understanding a keyboard.

    Either way, not likely to respond well to logic, which is probably seen as some sort of witchcraft.

  18. What is your complaint about the Tesla interior?

    Personally I’d prefer more brass, walnut and non-plastic feeling, non-embossed, leather. But I can accept that this is my personal taste and don’t pretend this is a universally objectively correct rule.

  22. oddly, Tesla interiors are very nice. The only real complaint on the actual build on the Tesla 3 was that it was over built. Costing it more than it should have.

  23. Read “The Dictator’s Handbook – Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics” for why things are often messed up & so for some clues about how to make them less bad.

  25. VICTIM much??? First off the ONLY thing that gives African countries money is resources. They have no manufacturing and they have no intellectual property. Every African country that has expelled the white man has turned into a pit of corruption starvation disease and they have moved backwards to a hunter gatherer life. I have a huge bet that South Africa will fail taking the Palladium mines with them. SA is extremely corrupt, they have the highest HIV rates in the world, they are burning and looting businesses, they are killing and beating other immigrant Africans, their electrical system ESKOM is failing etc etc etc. Basically as they get rid of the people who know how to run a modern country (White & Indian) they are devolving back into a primitive society. Just call it Zimbabwe II but worse.

  26. yes, but will it be harder for the car industry make a car with an already good interior into an electric, or for tesla to make to make an already good electric car with a good interior?

  28. Tesla’s batteries are of the “NCA” type – Lithium Nickel Cobalt Aluminum oxide. All but cobalt are largely produced outside of Africa.

    Cobalt is heavily sourced from Congo, and is a ‘conflict mineral’ with human rights issues such as child labor and forced mining (often debt-slavery, but also some flat-out slavery by militias). Such slavery would account for some part of the estimated 17-40% of Congo cobalt that is hand-mined by extremely poor diggers working in awful conditions.

    Foreign mining companies operating in Congo have been found to buy ore that originated from slave labor mining, making them complicit.

    Cobalt is about 3% of a Tesla battery, so a Tesla 85kWhr battery pack might have ~35# of cobalt. Tesla produced ~192000 cars in 2018, which would be around 3500 tons of cobalt, out of a global market of < 120,000 tons. Obviously this can be expected to increase with electric car sales.

    Musk has stated that he wants to get rid of cobalt in Tesla batteries because of it’s ‘conflict’ status. However, there doesn’t yet appear to be a good alternative, and electric car production seems likely to explode (10x? 50x? ) in the coming decade. Where will the world get all that cobalt?

    The world could and should help – perhaps by prohibiting import or production of any batteries made with cobalt that was not tracked and proven to have been mined with machinery rather than hand labor.

  30. I agree as the value of electric cars is going up due to many factors like longer lasting, lower operation cost, autonomous cars on the horizon… and the cost is going down
    Elon has demonstrated the ability to move fast and well plus every major car maker is rushing into EV’s. Tesla is well ahead of competition and will remain there.
    All in all it points to a rapid decimation of IC cars and their makers- much faster than all current forecasts from the famous but sadly wrong forecasters.

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