"What they produce can be produced by Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, Nissan. Anybody in the world can make it eventually, at much lower cost and probably much more efficiently," Faber said Monday on CNBC's "Trading Nation."
"The market for Toyota and these large automobile companies is simply not big enough, but the moment it becomes bigger, they'll move into the field and then Tesla will have a lot of competition."
Faber sees this increased competition causing more than a small dent in the company's business and stock performance.
"I think Tesla is a company that is likely to go to zero eventually," Faber said.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that Mercedes-Benz is entering the electric game in a big way, as it sets to unveil two electric SUVs and two electric sedans under a new line. And in a recent ad, BMW, which makes its own electric cars, tweaked Tesla for making drivers wait around for their vehicles in a recent ad.
Recently, Tesla business development executive Diarmuid O'Connell dismissed the company's competitors as having "delivered little more than appliances," in contrast to Tesla's ground-up method of rethinking how cars are powered and driven, according to Automotive News.
For Faber, the strategy of shorting Tesla is merely a part of his bearish approach to the market. On Monday, he recommended that "if you are an investor with a lot of nerves and you sleep well at night anyway, then you could hedge the portfolio somewhat by selling short some stocks that are overvalued and are likely to go down" — providing Tesla as an example.
- Source, CNBC
