It may seem absurd to put Tesla ahead of Big Auto, but by many standards, Tesla seems to be far ahead. You don’t have to take my word for it — Tesla [TSLA] is now the most valuable US car company, recently surpassing GM and Ford in market cap, and there’s a reason or 10 why the investment community on the whole sees Tesla as a more valuable company despite drastically lower annual production/sales output.
This article isn’t about proving that Tesla’s ahead, though. It’s actually a genuine, open-minded search for how long it’ll take Big Auto to catch up to Tesla … if it ever can. One widely held assumption is that large automakers can turn on a dime and crush Tesla at its own game “once the time is right.” That’s not true.