Ark Investing's Cathie Wood has seen her fortunes rise and fall during a very turbulent period for the stock market. She likely received too much credit when her various exchange-traded funds were flying high and has taken too much blame now that they're not doing quite as well.
That's sort of how it goes for any high-profile stock picker, and it's not all that different from how Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, George Soros, or really anyone who has gotten famous for being right more often than not when it comes to picking stocks.
Wood, however, rose very quickly and became a sort of white-hot star (and people love to see quick falls after quick rises). That has made her a tad controversial, but her new take on old should win her some favor with Tesla (TSLA), Lucid Motors (LCID), Rivian (RIVN), and any other electric-vehicle-company fans.
What she says should also give gasoline-car companies like Ford (F) and General Motors (GM) both cause for concern and more justification for their efforts to pivot to EVs.
Cathie Wood On the Demand for Oil
Wood shared on Twitter (TWTR) that not only has demand for oil peaked, she expects that the ripple effect caused by everything from what the Biden administration has been doing to Russia's invasion of Ukraine will accelerate oil-demand destruction.
Basically, she pointed out that while oil's days were already numbered, people may be driven to go electric sooner due to the current circumstances.
"The accelerated shift toward electric transportation will destroy oil consumption at the margin. Long term, though longer-term than I expected, oil prices will collapse under the weight of lower demand. Innovation solves problems," she added.
Not everyone on social media agreed with her, but this tweet was pretty typical of the responses (at least the polite ones).
What Does This Mean for Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian?
We may be at a tipping point when it comes to the demand for electric vehicles. Generally, high gas prices have been good for fuel-efficient cars, and lower gas prices have made people more willing to buy gas guzzlers like SUVs and pickup trucks.
Now, instead of buying a small car that uses less gas, more people might be willing to spend the money on an electric vehicle. The problem might be that Tesla, Rivian, and Lucid, not to mention all the other companies in the EV space, don't have any electric vehicles to sell them.
Rivian and Lucid produce essentially no vehicles right now and will ramp up over years to hit meaningful numbers. Tesla has a roughly one million vehicle run rate and might be able to double that.
Elon Musk clearly understands the opportunity as he commented on production during Tesla's fourth-quarter earnings call.
"The fundamental focus of Tesla this year is scaling output. So both last year and this year, if we were to introduce new vehicles, our total vehicle output would decrease. This is a very important point that I think people do not -- a lot of people do not understand," he said.
Basically, Musk plans to put all his might to increase how many cars Tesla makes because he sees the same opportunity Wood does.
