Tesla won't have a presence at this year's Detroit Auto Show but the electric-car maker is miles ahead of the competition in three key categories, ARK Invest founder and CEO Catherine Wood told CNBC on Monday.

Traditional automakers have been making sizable investments into electrifying their vehicles, but Tesla is leading the industry in battery technology, artificial intelligence and data collection, she argued.

"We believe that [the] transportation industry is going to shift wholesale to electric, and Tesla is ahead of the pack," Wood said on "Fast Money."

It will be hard for other producers to catch up, because it is in Tesla's "DNA," she added.

Wood, whose tech-heavy fund finished 2018 in the green and is continuing the upward trend thus far in 2019, thinks Tesla is at a cost advantage because it produces its own batteries for the Model S, Model X and Model 3 vehicles. Other car companies need to vertically integrate, she said.