Boeing may have used a lobbying firm to plant a scathing story about SpaceX

I'm making a statement on profit margins, Tesla's negative margins are just there for completeness.

> And you're not taking risk into account. Tesla is worth a lot more now than five years ago but there was no guarantee of that five years ago -- otherwise the price would have been higher five years ago.

There are no guarantees of anything. The potential for 10x growth was there. Those old companies weren't going to magically achieve that growth.

> You're taking this from the perspective of something like a mutual fund manager. Why don't they invest in both Tesla and GM? Well, they do.

Indeed they do. Who uses mutual funds? The "rich and powerful" do.

> Now take it from the perspective of an oil company executive. You can produce oil at a breakeven price of $45/barrel. If oil prices are at $75/barrel, you're making a nice fat profit margin. If somebody comes along and starts mass producing solar panels and electric cars...

It doesn't matter. The "rich and powerful" aren't all fully invested into oil, not even the oil execs, not even the Saudi princes. They diversify. If somebody comes and starts mass producing solar panels, they can buy that. Except of course in reality solar panels and electric cars have little impact on oil prices (rather it's the other way around), but let's say they had a significant impact, that's exactly how investors would hedge.

> How are they each going to make up more than $60 billion dollars every year by investing in a company worth under $50 billion dollars in total? There are seven major oil companies. Even using ridiculously optimistic numbers, Tesla isn't going to be worth trillions of dollars ten years from now. But they could cost the oil companies that much.

In the last decade, we had oil prices between 30$ and a 100$, while the amount of electric cars on the roads has remained irrelevant. If anything, electric cars need high oil prices to appear economical at all. But let's say electric cars would magically become highly profitable, how much money do you think would it cost those seven major companies to prevent not just Tesla but all other car makers from producing them? Everybody could go into the business of threatening to produce electric cars unless they're paid off, which is even more profitable than actually producing something! Eventually, the oil companies would have to decide it's cheaper to ignore the issue and let the market set the price.