On March 31, Eldon Musk unveiled the new Tesla vehicle which will be sold in 2017. The price drops from over $100,000 to $35,000 for the latest model. The unveiling was on the Tesla’s website and it looks good. There are books about Mr. Musk and his thinking into the car and while the company is not profitable, for auto industry is still a capital intensive business. The materials must be assembled, the dealership to sell the car established, for Tesla the batteries have to be cutting edge, there needs to be an easy way to charge your car and marketing and promotion will eat up dollars. The great advantage Tesla’s have is the car is also highly connected to the internet. If you have a Microsoft computer, occasionally the company sends its updates – Tesla does the same thing for its cars.

Chris Umiastowski wrote a column about his holiday trip to South Carolina called Tesla road trip maps out case for investment,  for he owns one of the sedans. One of the things holding back people purchasing the vehicle is – the charging of the battery – it is good for city driving but has not been great for road trips. Chris reports that is changing fast, there are more charging systems and the Tesla app helped find the charging systems as well as told him when the car was charged to continue the trip. At the moment, many of the charging systems are near restaurants and hotels – you need to eat sometime and people spend money in the restaurants.

Tesla has many challenges in making their brand easy to use as a gasoline vehicle; however every year the number of charging systems is increasing. It was reported on the website, over 200,000 people have made a $1,000 deposit for their new car in 2017, when it goes over a million it may be time to be real excited about how the average person views their vehicle. Perhaps next year when it is time to change the vehicle, it will be worth test driving.

Linking to dividend paying stocks, all the challenges Tesla has to build are the advantages dividend companies have. The companies will have distribution; they will have marketing and promotion departments; they will have access to banking credits; and they will have many satisfied customers who keep buying their products or services. It is great to read about Tesla but it is often easier to own stock in other companies till Tesla makes money.

There are more questions than answers, till the next time – to raising questions.