Understanding lithium demand, page-1055

Coronavirus was the perfect storm for tech innovation

From Tesla to 2U, ‘We were a buyer of these companies that were absolutely solutions to the problems coronavirus handed us,’ Wood says

“It’s been a fascinating time to be an active manager,” Cathie Wood told MarketWatch in early June.

Left unsaid: It’s been a fascinating time to be an active manager whose long-held strategy aligned perfectly with a once-in-a-lifetime crisis-driven upheaval of technology.

Wood, the founder and CEO of ARK Invest, has grabbed attention, some of it skeptical, for that unwavering belief in deeply disruptive technology companies, and for her insistence that big bets on outside-the-box investments are akin to value plays.

“If you have a five-year time horizon, like us, I can tell you with a straight face that I believe we’re a deep value manager because of these opportunities,” Wood said in an extended interview with MarketWatch in December.

The company’s flagship fund, the ARK Innovation ETF, is up 26% in the year to date, compared to just a 7.4% gain for the Nasdaq.

It’s pulled in over $1.3 billion in assets in that time period, according to FactSet data.

Wood is known for her transparency: ARK researchers communicate regularly with people in the industries they’re investing in, the company publishes its trades, and it sends out weekly commentary on big movers in its portfolios.

In an update since the COVID-19 pandemic locked down much of the country, Wood newly shared what her ideas have meant in practice: how the coronavirus crisis has helped accelerate innovation, more details on the trades she made during the March madness, and why the intuition of active managers beats algorithms.

MarketWatch: You get a lot of press, including from me, about your thinking on Tesla, but this time I’d love to get your take on bitcoin.

Wood: Oh, could we just talk about Tesla a little bit, since it just hit a new all-time high, $1,000?

MarketWatch: Yes, that’s a really good point. Of course.

Wood: It’s very interesting.

There’s an awakening in this market.

If you looked at Tesla a year ago it had been trashed by hedge funds and many others, saying it is going to run out of cash.

From one year ago when the stock got down to the $170s, to now, it just crossed $1,000, what you will see is that the balance sheet everyone was criticizing last year, today looks like a fortress compared to the balance sheets of traditional auto manufacturers.

Traditional manufacturers are in trouble.

We’ve been trying to get that message out for a long time.

Tesla was going to disrupt the traditional manufacturers which would have to make a number of great leaps to catch up.

In fact, they’ve had to cut back on their investments.

They haven’t succeeded in switching from the traditional internal combustion engine.

They can’t get up to Tesla’s standards.

We’ve seen Tesla moving toward autonomous.

Artificial intelligence is a big part of that.

I think that analysts are beginning to get it.

It’s less auto analysts and maybe analysts who are more technology-oriented.

This is going to be one of the biggest investment opportunities of our lifetime.

We were roundly disparaged last year.

MarketWatch: You came out with a $7,000 price target in February, I think it was. Does that still stand?

Wood: We’ve adjusted our base price for coronavirus.

Over a five-year horizon, we took the base price target to $6,800 but there is something else that we think could take it much higher.

It will probably launch its own ride hailing service, with human drivers, sometime this year.

Tesla will sell a car for a down payment, and then the person buying the car will be able to pay the rest of it via their earnings.

It’s a really good idea and I think they’re going to do it and we’ve just finished the modeling.

It would take our price target up considerably.

Compared to their current model, ride hailing is much more profitable, and I don’t think anyone has put that in their model.

www.marketwatch.com




UK now has more electric car charging points than fuel stations

There are now almost 1,000 more public places to charge electric cars than there are forecourts to pump petrol in the UK.

There are 9,300 electric vehicle (EV) charging locations across the UK, compared to 8,400 fuel stations.

The boost in UK charging points reflects an acceleration in the adoption of electric cars amongst UK motorists.

In less than a century since Britain’s first fuel station opened – November 1919 at Aldermaston in Berkshire – the number of forecourts has peaked, declined and been overtaken by charging stations designed for electric cars, not combustion-powered.

Almost 80% of UK petrol stations have closed since 1970, whilst the number of electric vehicle charging locations has increased from a few hundred in 2011 to more than 9,000 in August 2019.

Of these locations, more than 1600 provide rapid charging, and can recharge a typical EV battery to around 80% in under an hour.




According to Zap-Map, two new rapid charge devices came online every day in the last month. Almost all UK motorway service stations have charging stations installed, the majority of which provide a rapid charge option.

Transport for London has installed more than 1,000 EV charge points in the last year alone, yet supply of conventional fuel within the capital is becoming scarcer.

Central London has nearly half as many petrol stations per car as the Scottish Highlands; only four remain within the congestion-charge zone.

One of the country’s oldest forecourts, the Bloomsbury Service Station, which had been in operation since 1926, was closed in 2008.

The introduction of the new Ultra-Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in April 2019, has led to increasing numbers of London drivers looking to zero-emission solutions for their commuter or commercial transport needs.

Most electric vehicle owners only need to charge at home however, so the UK government is looking to further support EV adoption, recently announcing a proposal for the installation of charge points for EVs in all new housing.5

In August 2019, compared to the previous year, demand for battery electric vehicles increased 158.1%, resulting in a 1.4% market share, the highest monthly market share on record.

www.pesmedia.com/electric-vehicles-charging-points-uk/

The future of transport – building EV growth into the energy network

Climate change has raced up the list of priorities for the public during the last year or so. MORI polls have shown that this is now at the top of the public’s concerns, sharing importance levels only achieved by Brexit, social care and the NHS

https://airqualitynews.com/2020/05/...t-building-ev-growth-into-the-energy-network/

Electric car UK charging points map

There are now more than 30,000 charge points across the UK in over 11,000 locations - that's more public places to charge than petrol stations, with around 10,000 charge points added in 2019 alone.

Find electric car charging points near you with a map of all the charging stations around the UK, in major cities such as London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Belfast.

www.edfenergy.com/electric-cars/charging-points

Charging point statistics 2020

With new charge points being added daily, the UK’s charging point infrastructure is continually changing.

The tables and charts shown below track the number of charging points across the UK and are updated live from the Zap-Map database.

In addition to the number of charging devices and locations, the charts provide a breakdown by charger type, connector type and by region.

Note that this data can be used by third parties as long as the source is attributed to Zap-Map and if online, a link is added back to https://www.zap-map.com.

In addition to the market tracking below, Zap-Map offers the annual EV Charging Survey and a suite of Zap-Insights to support the roll-out of the EV sector through the provision of analytical and data support – get in touch to find out more.


www.zap-map.com/statistics/







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