In Wall Street Warriors, students write about important aspects of the finance field as well as news in the stock market. This week, sophomore Bennett Szafranski discusses electric vehicles and how their use affects the stock market.
Throughout this year, the electric vehicle sector has taken off and electric vehicle stocks prices have risen tremendously. The automobile company Ford has committed to going fully electric by the year 2024 and their competitor General Motors has said that they aim to stop selling gas-powered vehicles by the year 2035. In addition to these companies, there are companies aimed only towards producing electric vehicles such as Nio, Tesla, Solo, Workhorse, and Lucid Motors. These stocks have gone up over six hundred percent in the past year. Not only are electric cars in production, electric trucks are also. Workhorse manufactures electric delivery trucks. They were rumored to be in the running for a four hundred and eighty-two million-dollar contract with USPS to provide electric delivery trucks.
There are numerous different types of vehicles that are produced. For example, Solo Electra Meccanica has developed a three-wheeled one-person vehicle that has capabilities similar to a regular car. Benefits to using electric vehicles over gas vehicles include that they can reduce carbon emissions and have a higher performance than many gas-run counterparts.
Not only are these cars better for the environment, but they are also cheaper to produce and have better mileage. This year on Tesla’s annual Battery Day, where they announce their current and future ideas for the company, they announced that their new battery will be cheaper to make, while the cars will increase in power and range. In addition, Nio has announced that their cars will be able to go for six hundred and seventy miles with one charge and that users can swap out their battery for a new one in any of their stations.
Charging stocks have also been able to benefit from this recent EV boom. Companies like Blink and Chargepoint operate and own charging stations around the country. Blink is America’s second-largest charging station operator and it partnered with McDonald’s and Whole Foods to put charging stations in their parking lots. Chargepoint is the largest charging station operator and runs seventy-three percent of charging stations in North America. Blink was up 2,000 percent at one point this year and Chargepoint is up over one hundred percent this year.
Earlier this year, the governor of California Gavin Newsom announced that the state of California will be requiring the sale of all new passenger vehicles to be zero-emission by 2035. He believes that doing this will greatly reduce the number of fossil fuels being let out in the environment and will combat climate change. This led to multiple EV stocks rising and creating new fifty-two-week highs. The actions of all these companies are the reason for this big electric vehicle boom and many do not see it ending any time soon.
The electric vehicle market is definitely one to be watched carefully as it seems to be the method of transportation of the future.