Barron’s noted on January 7th, 2020, that Tesla had become the most valuable auto company in the history of America. Let me repeat: Not just currently. We are talking about the most valuable American auto company since America was born. Congratulations to Elon, Tesla, and the team for unlocking this achievement!
Another one bites the dust.
Editor’s note: Below is a portion of an article published on the EVANNEX blog. While Henry Ford might not have been fighting with short sellers, oil barons, and Twitter trolls, he, like Elon Musk, was also dogged and irritated by short-term thinkers more interested in quarter-to-quarter financials than long-term vision and growth. Charles Morris relays a story about Henry Ford getting so fed up with it that narrow, near-term mindset that he took Ford Motor Company private. Musk has read up on Ford quite a bit, so perhaps this anecdote kept coming to mind as Musk verbally wrestled with analysts. Alas, it’s 2018 and the Tesla story is more complicated than the Ford story — in several ways — which has ended up dissipating the idea of Tesla going private. In any case, this comparison is a fascinating little look at the kind of thing that businessmen like Musk and Ford sometimes have to struggle with.
For decades, electric cars have been a dream of the future. Magazines showed show cars and experiments, but fielded few or no production examples. During periods of high oil prices, their prospects rose, but as oil prices declined, they faded. Tinkerers and DIY mechanics made home-built lead-acid gas car conversions. There were tantalizing forays stimulated by California’s CARB ZEV (zero emission vehicle) mandates, like the GM EV1, Toyota RAV4 EV, and Honda EV Plus, but they were in limited numbers and more often offered for lease but not for sale.
Tesla’s stock has been experiencing a rapid fall in recent days, with the stock price hitting a low not seen in more than a couple of months. The Tesla stock’s market cap now totals “just” $48.58 billion. Since we previously wrote about Tesla becoming more valuable than any of the Big 3 automakers, it seemed fitting to correct the record and update the comparisons.
Let’s be honest, comparing Tesla to conventional automakers like GM, Ford, and Fiat-Chrysler Automotive is a little unfair — the “Big 3” don’t sell solar roofs or energy storage systems, just cars.
There’s been a long-standing argument that the Tesla Model 3 won’t arrive on time because Tesla (TSLA) had production delays on the Model S and Model X. That argument seems to be built on faulty logic, as Elon pointed out on a conference call a year or so ago.
