Bitcoin surged to another record on Saturday after reaching more than $1 trillion in market value for the first time, leaving some of its biggest backers in a state of wonderment.

In a tweet, Elon Musk said Bitcoin prices “seem high." The world’s richest person was replying to Peter Schiff -- a crypto skeptic and gold bug -- who said the precious metal is better than Bitcoin and fiat money.

“Money is just data that allows us to avoid the inconvenience of barter," Musk tweeted. “That data, like all data, is subject to latency & error." In the following post, he added, “that said, BTC & ETH do seem high lol."

Musk earlier called Bitcoin a “less dumb" version of cash. The largest cryptocurrency rose as much as 3.4% to a record high of $57,527 on Saturday before paring gains to $57,040 at 1:26 p.m. in New York. It’s surged 56% since the end of January and more than quadrupled last year. For several years after its debut more than a decade ago, Bitcoin traded for just a few cents.

Crypto believers are dueling with skeptics for the dominant narrative around the climb: the former see an asset being embraced for its ability to hedge risks such as inflation, while the latter sense a precarious mania riding atop waves of monetary and fiscal stimulus.

Musk gave impetus to Bitcoin joining the mainstream when Tesla Inc. said it invested $1.5 billion and was prepared to begin accepting the cryptocurrency as a form of payment for its cars. According to Dan Ives at Wedbush Securities, Tesla has made a profit of about $1 billion over the past month from that bet.

“To put this in perspective, Tesla is on a trajectory to make more from its Bitcoin investments than profits from selling its EV cars in all of 2020," Ives wrote in a note Saturday.

Traditional finance officials who have seen little value in the digital currency see the surge as part of a larger speculative bubble. Howard Lutnick, chief executive officer of Cantor Fitzgerald LP, said the dramatic rise in values of Bitcoin and Tesla was driven by retail investors in much the same manner that led to last month’s surge in GameStop Corp. shares. Tesla gained more than 700% last year.

“With all due respect: What’s Tesla been? Why was Tesla up?" Lutnick said Friday on Bloomberg TV. “It’s because retail kept buying it. Why is Bitcoin where it is? Because retail keeps buying it. This is just another form of the same thing. GameStop was Bitcoin and Tesla."

Still, investors haven’t failed to notice the outperformance compared with traditional assets. The Bloomberg Galaxy Crypto Index has towered over the returns of stocks, gold, commodities, and bonds so far this year.

Advocates such as former hedge fund manager and Galaxy Digital founder Mike Novogratz are seeking to position themselves for even bigger gains.

Galaxy’s trading desk is one of several that are providing Bitcoins for the Purpose Bitcoin ETF, the first-ever approved. The Toronto Stock Exchange-listed fund debuted Thursday. CI Global Asset Management filed this week in Canada to offer the CI Galaxy Bitcoin ETF. Galaxy Digital will act as the Bitcoin sub-advisor and execute trades on behalf of the proposed ETF. None have been approved in the US

“Crypto is being institutionalized at an accelerating rate," Novogratz said in an interview Friday with Bloomberg. “It’s all part of this accelerating evolution of being a store of value."

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LG Chem shareholders on Friday approved a plan to separate its battery business into a new company, paving the way for a potential public listing to finance expansion. The unit, which will be launched on Dec. 1, will first become a wholly-owned subsidiary tentatively named LG Energy Solutions, and then up to 30% of the company’s shares may be listed in an initial offering in about a year.

LG Chem is the world’s top battery maker supplying Tesla Inc and General Motors Co.

“While the battery business is expected to post enormous growth, competition is intensifying from not only other battery makers but automakers,” LG Chem Chief Executive Officer Hak Cheol Shin told a shareholder meeting in Seoul.

“We have decided to separate our battery business to better optimize our management in today’s fast-changing market environment.”
More than 82% of LG Chem shareholders who attended the meeting voted in favor of the plan, the source said. LG Chem declined to comment.

“With the split-off of the battery business, we can use various fundraising options to expand investments at the right time, and based on this we can secure a clear global No.1 position by widening the gap with rivals,” LG Chem Chief Financial Official Cha Dong-Seok said.

The company’s growth was constrained by rising debts as a result of a sharp increase in capacity investments, he added.

Shares of LG Chem closed down 6.1% versus a 2.6% fall in the benchmark KOSPI.

Asked about selling stakes to strategic investors in the run-up to the IPO, Shin told the company was reviewing various options.

Hwang Yu-sik, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities, said that as a standalone company the battery business would be able to better raise money including through an IPO to expand its production capacity.

South Korea’s National Pension Service (NPS), LG Chem’s No.2 shareholder with a 9.96% stake, voted against the split-off plan having earlier raised concerns about damage to shareholder value.

Source:Reuters

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This spring, the $169,000 Lucid Air is coming and Peter Rawlinson says it will be the planet's fastest, longest-range electric vehicle. 

Peter Rawlinson's Lucid Air has many goals. One is that it should be hailed as the best electric vehicle in the world. A decade ago, he designed Tesla's Model S. 

 



Certainly, the 'Dream' edition of the Air seems to wow. It tops the S with an industry-leading 517 miles per charge, quicker recharging, and in just over 2 seconds the ability to go from 0 mph to 60 mph. This spring, the first Air customers will take delivery. 

But Rawlinson's dreams go far beyond offering a $169,000 luxury car to rich drivers.

His bigger purpose is to leverage the 1,080 horsepower propulsion technology to power cheaper electric vehicles—which he says are by far the most powerful in the world. In just five years, Rawlinson wants to be selling hundreds of thousands of mid-$40,000 electric cars and helping big automakers sell $25,000 mass-market EVs–the very same objective his old boss, Elon Musk, is chasing.

Rawlinson wants to build his cars on his very first oil-rich automotive factory in Saudi Arabia, which has two-thirds owned by its sovereign wealth fund.

“There’s a really big misunderstanding about our business model,” says the Welsh engineer, 63. “This is not about making an expensive car for wealthy people. That’s not why I’m here. That’s not what drives me. … I want us to be making a million cars a year. The ambition of Lucid is to have a profound effect. We are not a minority play.”

The current U.S. president has also signed initiatives pushing the federal government to substitute energy with fossil-fuel vehicles. 

The major businesses jumped on board. General Motors has already undertaken to manufacture only electric vehicles by 2035 and Ford and Volkswagen both aim to switch away from fossil fuels vigorously. 


 

California, the main U.S. market for EVs and home to Lucid and Tesla, is ground-zero for the increase and may become America’s “Norway” for battery-powered cars. “At more than 50% EV penetration, Norway is 15 years ahead of the rest of the world,” Jonas said. “Watch for California to move in this direction rather quickly, influencing a significant number of other U.S. states that are in a position to take matters into their own hands in terms of de-carbonization of the fleet.”

Lucid is starting out at a calculated rate for now. This year, Rawlinson plans to manufacture at least 6,000 Airs at a new plant in Casa Grande, Arizona, potentially producing revenue of $900 million. In 2022, as Air versions priced at $77,000 arrive, volume could top 25,000 units. With the launch of an electric crossover, tentatively called Gravity, in 2023, followed by even cheaper and smaller versions to compete with Tesla's top-selling Model 3, further growth is expected.

With a $1.3 billion investment in 2018 from Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, which, according to Pitchbook, priced the firm at $15 billion, the private Newark, California-based company is currently paying for Air's growth and development. That is on top of the $150 million previously raised by the company.

But it's expensive to make cars and Rawlinson knows he needs to find even more cash and is seeking to publicly list shares, probably through a SPAC. Though he’d previously considered SPAC a “dirty word,” that’s changed. “That was the financier’s view, that was Wall Street’s view of SPACs, not so long ago. I think I would say what a difference a year makes,” he says, without confirming a specific plan.


 

“If you’re a sprinter what is your best time for the 100 meters? That’s your metric. Usain Bolt, it’s a 9.69,” Rawlinson says. “You can almost do [the same] for an electric car company, and that is your EPA efficiency.”

He came to Tesla in 2009 when it was emerging from garage startup status and was promoted to Vice President and Chief Engineer of Model S in 2010.. “I put my heart and soul into that.”

Musk is famously hard to work for, but Rawlinson has mostly positive memories of his Tesla days. “We got on like a house on fire for most of the time I was there–not at the very end.”

“We both obsessed about reaching for the stars with technology and engineering–and it just can’t be good enough,” he recalls. Rawlinson is following Musk’s playbook when it comes to cracking the auto market: Start with ultra-luxe and then drive aggressively down market.

He left Tesla in 2012, but was ready to get back to work a year later. He joined the Silicon Valley startup Atieva as a CTO in 2013 as it moved from a battery supplier to an EV manufacturer.

It was renamed Lucid Motors at the end of 2016, ahead of the debut of the Air prototype, but struggled to raise funds until the Saudi investment. Rawlinson, who became the CEO of Lucid in 2019, won't say how much of the company he owns.

Lucid and Tesla are not the only beneficiaries of the growing demand for electric cars. Amazon-backed Rivian is starting to deliver electric pickups and SUVs this year. Famed car designer Henrik Fisker is prepared to begin selling the Ocean, with a stylish $37,499 electric crossover in 2022.9 electric crossover in 2022.

Apple is eternally rumored to be eying the space. Dozens more EVs are coming from General Motors, Volkswagen, Hyundai, Nissan and other major car manufacturers, starting this year with Ford's high-powered Mustang Mach-E.

Gartner analyst Mike Ramsey thinks that Lucid's plan to move down to more affordable ultra-premium cars is the right approach. “What’s been proven is in this technology the way that you get in is that you aim at the high market, then build a loyal customer base, use the cache, the brand awareness, and then spread and go further.”


 

Musk and Rawlison share a passion for EV technology, but they can't be any different from how they run their companies. Tesla has become the world's most valuable automaker, briefly turning Musk into the richest person in the world on the basis of his large stake in it, despite selling less than 500,000 vehicles in 2020. Musk has become the world's leading technology icon, with more than 42 million people on Twitter. And for good or bad, he rules as Tesla's absolute leader and brand symbol.

Lucid’s CEO, who doesn’t have a Twitter account, has a different approach. “I’m not an autocrat. Lucid is a team effort,” he says. “That is a big difference. The other thing is that I don’t expect someone who buys a Lucid to know my name. I don’t expect them to know who Peter Rawlinson is.”

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Several times, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has said that his company wants to enter the Indian market. The electric car manufacturer registered a branch in Bengaluru last month, which is a gateway for global technology companies.

 

In Karnataka, Tesla will set up an electric-car manufacturing facility, the southern Indian state's government said in a brief statement.

On Saturday, Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa officially confirmed the decision, according to the India Today news organization. The announcement was part of the list of benefits promised in the Union budget for Karnataka.

"American firm Tesla will open a electric-car manufacturing unit in Karnataka," the statement by Yediyurappa said.

Tesla Motors India and Energy Private Limited were incorporated by the electric car manufacturer last month, with its registered office in the city of Bengaluru.

 

Musk, the richest man in the world, has tweeted several times about his desire to enter the Indian market. In December 2020, he verified that his company Tesla will launch in the country this year.

India has been interested in reducing its dependence on oil to minimize pollution, but its efforts to promote electric vehicles have been hindered by a lack of investment in manufacturing and infrastructure, such as charging stations.

The Indian authorities are planning to offer $4.6 billion (€3.80 billion) in incentives to companies setting up advanced battery manufacturing facilities.

 

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