Al Gore was spotted while hiding in Silicon Valley this week.
He looks like he is celebrating St. Patrick’s Day in July. He no
longer has a pinkish complexion on his rotund body. His skin color is now fully green as he
turned green with envy. The objects of
his envy are the shareholders in Tesla, the firm that continues to defy gravity
and logic and has now hit an intraday high of $130.68 on Friday July 26, 2013.
Yes the Musketeer has the street all excited about his
wonder cars. Elon was pretty brilliant
to realize that people like Dr. P of Los Angeles would flock to buy the Model S
rather than other luxury vehicles. The Model S outsold all luxury cars that they
compete with during the first half of 2013.
Insideevs.com reports Tesla held 8.4% of the luxury car segment for the
period.
That means one in twelve of the folks like Dr. P with lots
of money or lots of credit to spend on their personal vehicle chose a
Tesla. I tip my hat to the team at
Draper Fisher Jurvetson for investing in Tesla and not Fisker as Kleiner
Perkins did. DFJ was smart not to let Al
Gore and Colin Powell advise them on their investments. Kleiner Perkins laments the day they met
these two thermodynamic cretins who they thought were so well connected to Mr.
Obama and Dr. Chu that the profits would simply pour in. KP used to be the Big Dog of VCs now they are simply a mutt.
This week I did get an email from a senior partner at DFJ
who reads my blog telling me how happy he is with his Model S, and that he far
prefers the car to a gasoline car and that he suffers no range anxiety.
I congratulated him and his partners at DFJ for making money
of their investment in Tesla but I did explain that the car is not as green as
he claimed (he claimed 49.5% efficient on natural gas used to generate electric
power. I also emailed that when Tesla’s segment of
customers buy 10 carat diamond rings from De Beers they pay a luxury tax rather
than getting a handout from Mr. Obama.
If I were to be asked by Tesla to give advice on a pricing
strategy I would tell Tesla to raise the price of the Model S to $130,000 and
they would still sell as many cars to the rich, famous, and want to be Green
crowd. You see folks like Dr. P have
plenty of cash and want to cruise in the HEV lane when they drive around Lala
Land. I just think it is a crime that
per the Wall Street Journal that Dr. P’s car was subsidized to the tune of
$45,000 by tax payers.
Knowing Dr. P’s penchant to show off, I guess he bought his
wife a 10 carat diamond for their 25th wedding anniversary. Thankfully Mr. Obama has not as of yet
decided to subsidize diamonds. He
probably will after Mr. Huffman tells Mr. Obama at the next Carol King concert
at the White House that diamonds permanently sequester pure carbon.