Is it time to sell TSLA?

The Tesla app outage locked drivers out of cars by disabling their mobile app recently.
In addition to what some have deemed a disappointing battery day event, the stock price came down by over 13% on the next session.

For us, Tesla is a long-term stock, at least until they begin to have real competition on electric vehicles and, soon, autonomous driving.

Tesla vs. the competition

A Porsche Taycan is arguably a good-looking car, be it far more expensive and with less battery capacity, and has a nicer interior than a Tesla.
However, that is not where Tesla has its focus.

Tesla is attempting to change the mindset of car drivers - from driving combustion engines and to move over to driving electric.
As Musk said on Battery Day, they could make a car with a far more expensive-looking interior - but that will then increase the price of the car and, for the moment, it is more important to have drivers consider migrating to electric.
On the other hand, Porsche has its sights set on providing a car for existing Porsche owners (who value luxury) and perhaps new Porsche owners looking to go electric.

TSLA also has a lot of growth ahead of it, whereas VW (owners of Porsche) need to make a big shift from combustion to all-electric cars (and perhaps other area)s before it has a chance to grow.
Bear in mind that making these changes will incur great expense - and take time to implement.

Earlier in the year, it was also rumoured that Tesla will soon start to provide its own insurance for cars - which will be a breath of fresh air in a very stale and primitive car insurance market.
It could easily take into consideration factors such as driving habits, driving areas, road quality and exact miles that are usually driven (as it will have the data in most cases) whereas existing insurance companies do not have that accurate information and mainly go by what they are told.

Another avenue is ride-hailing.
Uber and Lyft will come under attack if Tesla decides to go forward with their ride-hailing service.
Tesla can offer a car at a cheaper price than a Toyota Prius and the driver might be offered to pay towards the price of the car in instalments via driving hours.

Add the ride-hailing service road data to the data Tesla already has from current drivers and they seem so far ahead with their electric car and autonomous model that it is probably more than a little worrying for other car companies.

Tesla has around 25% share of electric vehicles in China.
Currently, there are over 150 electric car companies.
The lack of real competition, no advertising, affordable cars and battery power technology provides a good story for the TSLA stock.

California is banning the sale of new combustion cars from 2035 - and other states and countries will no doubt do the same over time.
Manufacturers will have to play catch up - and not just with their cars.

The TSLA charging infrastructure for drivers is getting bigger - so driving and being able to stop and charge is getting easier.
Unless manufacturers decide to share TSLA charging points (and I would imagine this would involve some form of money transaction and subscription) they will need to rush and create their own charging points.
Put that into context - TSLA has been going for over 10 years and some other manufacturers are only just getting started.

There can be an argument that TSLA is risky.
Another argument is they had a power outage and that does not look good for the company.
And yet another argument could be other companies will have bigger and better EVs.

Yes - TSLA is risky, but so is any trade.
Using CoE and other factors help reduce the risk.

Yes - the power outage is not good but I am sure they will learn from it.
Electric companies that have been going for many decades can have power outages.
Every company has obstacles but it’s only if they don't fix it then it becomes a problem.
Take ZM from earlier in the year and all the bad news and security issues surrounding that company at the time - we were happily buying into the stock and saw it go on to double in price.

There are many car companies that could compete with Tesla.
So why then has not a single company made a car to compete with Tesla on the same scale as yet?
When AAPL released the iPhone, it took years before the competition had anything that was really worthy of being a smartphone.

Right now, we have a TSLA Model 3 and would probably not buy a Porsche Taycan.
Maybe when Porsche have enough charging stations around the country (and the capacity for more miles) then that will become an option.

This article is not meant to be about how wonderful Tesla is.
It is to point out the reasons why Tesla might be a good stock to own based on how far it appears to be ahead of its competition.

Let's go trade!