Nasdaq Plays Down EV Revolution, Ponders Investing in ExxonMobil.

The article in question comes to us from the home website of Nasdaq, the second-largest American-born stock exchange in the world. So to say, when Nasdaq publishes an article telling you to invest in a specific industry, investors tend to listen.

Before starting, it's worth mentioning that this Nasdaq article was written for stock investors, not car enthusiasts. More than a few times, it occurred to me that it may be best to just stay in my lane and avoid the topic altogether. The reason I decided against doing so ultimately came down to the fact that investor funding has a direct impact on what cars do and don't get manufactured. It's a phenomenon that directly impacts the choices of cars you or I are able to drive. Therefore, this is absolutely something worthwhile.

That said, I couldn't help but be surprised when this article was titled "Oil is Back Over $80. Time to Buy ExxonMobil?" Perhaps never before in online news media has there been so much to unpack in around 17 syllables, but let's try, just for a laugh. First of all, why, in the middle of a near-global energy crisis and oil coming in at around $80 per barrel of crude, would the average Joe investing in crude oil be an intelligent idea? And why ExxonMobil specifically?

Well, the answer involves an understanding of a complex, global economy and more than a little 4-D chess playing. Being car enthusiasts, we know more than enough about the worldwide microchip shortage. As it happens, the same forces involved in starting that shortage impacts every facet of the manufacturing industry, including petrochemicals.

We aren't able to have a one-on-one dialogue with the author of this particular Nasdaq article. Still, we can at least infer that they expect the production of petroleum products to eventually once again meet the demand it saw in the days before the global health crisis 18 months or so ago. But what has me scratching my head especially, and as we all know as car enthusiasts, is why they've failed to take the current Electric Vehicle revolution.

Well, actually, Nasdaq hasn't left out EV's at all. It's also worth mentioning that there aren't any factual inaccuracies in the article's data either. Instead, where the error in their thinking occurs, at least in my mind, is the magnitude with which the all-electric revolution is changing the world of motoring right this very second. To quote directly from the source material, "Climate change and its attendant need to abandon fossil fuels do not appear to be hurting Exxon's stock price in a world that remains thirsty for oil".

Now, granted, even just five years ago (god, that feels like an eternity now) that quote would have been 100% correct. But, this isn't 2016, this is the 2020s, and times are changing fast, evidently, a lot faster than stock exchangers so high in their ivory towers that they can't even see the ground anymore.

If the world is still so hopelessly dependant on oil, then why did Ford recently announce they'd be investing $11 billion in alternative energy infrastructure? What about Toyota, who's announced they'd invest as much as $13.6 billion? We could go on, and on all day long. But the point is, as we car enthusiasts have known for quite some time now, EVs are a lot closer to making companies like ExxonMobil and Chevron sweat a lot more than they may be right now. Don't believe me? Maybe look at Tesla's latest market capitalization numbers and get back to me.

As gearheads, it hasn't been easy to accept alternative power sources for our cars. If there's anyone who loves things that burn oil more than petrochemical companies, it's muscle car fans with their big-block V8 motors. Even so, for the most part, the average car enthusiast has already begrudgingly conceded the fact that it's electric cars, not gas or diesel, that's going to be the path forward for humanity, and to that effect, even autonomous vehicles as well.

If American car culture that stereotypically drags their heels on any change in automotive tech is faster to adapt than one of the world's most trusted stock exchanges, I think it reveals deep-seated issues with our society that spans way, way beyond just petrolheads. That's without opening the can of worms regarding ExxonMobil and Chevron's latest legal catastrophes and how so often both companies manage to make legal troubles "disappear," so to speak.

So then, as a moral decision, and maybe even a financial one, investing in a company like ExxonMobil is probably not a very good idea. Stock trading is generally a long-term occupation. For as many legal snafus as the world's biggest oil firms find themselves in lately, there's no guarantee that there's enough time to sell your shares before the next scandal potentially brings the whole thing crumbling down. It might be best then to just save your pennies and buy that aftermarket do-hickey for your car at Autozone instead. It might end up being a safer investment in the auto industry than ExxonMobil stock one day.

At the end of the day, deciding whether investing in ExxonMobil is a good or bad idea is up to the individual to decide. But before you do that, we recommend reading this Nasdaq article in its entirety before you make that judgment. Feel free to tell us your two cents in the comments below.