You may or may not be aware, but the "famous" electric sports car manufacturer Tesla Motors is arriving on the NASDAQ this week (ticker TSLA). The IPO has priced above expectations and the company will have a market cap of around $1.5bn, even though it is currently losing $100m a year, and losses on this sort of scale will certainly continue into the near future.
This is the first IPO of a car manufacturer in the US since the 1950s.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/212273-can-tesla-motors-deliver-electrifying-growth?source=hp_wc
You may remember Top Gear testing the Tesla Roadster a couple of years ago. The car was described as "biblically quick" (which it is) but then it broke down on the track, and having no electric sockets nearby had to be hand-pushed back to the workshop.
I am really not sure whether this is the most obvious short I've ever seen, or the best growth story. What I do know however is that this car is most definitely not "green". The vast majority of electricity in the world is and will continue to be generated by burning coal, and the only way we could all convert to using electric vehicles is to burn orders of magnitude more of the stuff than we do now.
This is one reason why I like coal to liquids. It's a much cleaner way of using coal to power road-based transportation than electricity is.
Anyway, I think watching what happens to Tesla might be quite interesting, or even amusing. If I was rich I would definitely buy one just for a laugh, and put a "Coal-powered Car" sticker on it or something ... :-)
