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I personally think the stock market is bonkers about Tesla. It's a local effect over the possibility of entering the S&P, maybe some short squeeze and possibly expectations about new tech on battery day. Having said that, I think the relative valuation can be supported without any of those outlandish claims.

Tesla produces about 300k vehicles a year. Toyota produces 30x that. However, the demand over Teslas meant they almost did not feel any demand impact because of Covid, while Toyota saw a 30% demand drop. There is a huge room for growth on EVs, and EV today means Tesla.

If Tesla has a 5 year lead, and if Toyota continues to fumble the technology transition, an actual revenue overtake in 10 years is imaginable. Hugely optimistic, but within the realm of possibility, with no need for Mars dreams.

>However, the demand over Teslas meant they almost did not feel any demand impact because of Covid, while Toyota saw a 30% demand drop.

Tesla doesn't even define what a "delivery" is (remember factory-gated?), nor do I believe any numbers that come out of China, so I'm skeptical that they weren't affected by Covid-19. Personally, I think they "delivered" a number to ensure the stock analysts are appeased.

If demand is through the roof, and profits are negligent, what have they cut Model Y prices already?

>if Toyota continues to fumble the technology transition

Toyota pioneered, and continues to sell, hybrid electric vehicles (fuel cell, too). Pure BEVs have many issues (including cost), so it isn't like the market has 100% decided on the technology yet.

I believe tesla's numbers. When you have a backlog of sales a few cancled orders just changes the queue. Toyota didn't have that. Tesla also had customers in industry least affected (engineers and other upper class) who didn't need to adjust their life as much as waiters did.

Toyota (and subsidiaries like Lexus) serve a wide array of customers and demographics. Even with decreasing sales, they should drive net income that will match net revenues for Tesla this year.

You can also drive Toyota's cars through puddles, whereas Tesla's may encounter issues that are "acts of God", which are not covered by warranty:

https://insideevs.com/news/433643/video-tesla-model-3-rear-b...

I believe they "delivered" 90k vehicles too, by whatever definition they choose as "delivered".

I mentioned "factory-gated" in the OP because back when the metric of choice was cars "produced", Tesla had a quarter in which it claimed to have "produced" a certain number of "factory-gated" cars, and touted that number. It turned out, some of these cars were not complete. Some didn't even have seats. So exaggerating relevant metrics isn't new for Tesla (or other companies for that matter).

This isn't a comment on the advertising but I am struck by how Tesla and Elon Musk remind me of Apple and Steve Jobs. Both very divisive companies and leaders prone to downright emotional attacks from one side and staunch defense by the other. While has been quite a bit of hyperbole, overselling, and straight up failure to deliver, you can't dispute that both pushed their respective industries forward almost singlehandedly and consequently reap the financial success.

Steve Jobs didn't go off talking about how the stock is overvalued and go off producing short shorts as a joke. He had numerous notes of how he didn't care about what the competitors or nay-sayers said. Job's jabs at others (flash, app store rejections) were generally marketing, breif, and thought through. He almost never talked about future products and would often say 'let's see what the future holds'.

Both are product minded people who were interested in going into the weeds of the product but Jobs was focused on the UX but Musk is incredibly focused on being impressed by technical details for either the cool factor or some other detail.

These two both were micromanagers and outspoken leaders but thats where the similarities end. Musk is about his own interests of humor, cool factor, or impression. Jobs was focused on 'best' to a fault. I think the biggest difference between the two is that Jobs had a lot of time to get beat down by failure so he could become humble and learn how to lead people and care. (Not to say he is an insane example of it, I simply mean that early Jobs acted closer to Elon and leadership risk factor. Next changed that.)

A thought comes to mind: Twitter wasn't a thing for most of Steve Jobs's career. (Looking at Wiki pages, Jobs's time at Apple was 1976-1985, then 1997-2011; Twitter was created in 2006.) Meanwhile, my impression is that most of Musk's antics occur on Twitter. If Steve Jobs grew up in the Twitter age, would he have done that kind of stuff too?

A Quora answer says Jobs didn't make any social media accounts at all, using only phone and email for communication (although it doesn't cite sources), and another article supports the idea that he never made a Twitter account. So that's a point against that theory. Though not against the underlying theory: "If you're a CEO with a certain kind of personality, you should stay the hell away from Twitter".

Musk isn't some young kid but a 49 year old. 2 years ago he baselessly accused a rescue diver as a pedophile and doubled down on it in court. For some reason, I doubt Steve Jobs would have done that. I don't know what "kind of personality" this is but if you have that kind of personality (CEO or not), yes, stay away from Twitter and all social media. Though that wouldn't be your biggest problem anyways.

For what it's worth, Musk's defense on that one is that, where he grew up, "pedo guy" was generally used as an insult not to be taken literally, any more than "idiot" seriously means "IQ between 0 and 25". He does seem to be telling the truth on that one; his judgment is questionable on multiple counts, but it's not a case of deliberately making up an accusation.

"Elon Musk is right, it seems: in the 1980s the phrase "pedo guy" was used as an insult in Pretoria, where he grew up – and it was a generic reference that did not necessarily mean someone was a pedophile. But telling a court in the United States that the slang was "common" in South Africa may be stretching the truth, according to other people's recollections."

https://www.businessinsider.co.za/elon-musk-pedo-guy-really-...

He did then hire a private investigator, who apparently produced some suggestive reports: "that Unsworth had met his wife when she was eleven or twelve, and that he had been unpopular in the cave rescue team because he was "creepy"". Apparently on the basis of this, Musk made further accustions in a later email to a third party—one prefaced "off the record", but that wasn't legally binding:

"“I suggest that you call people you know in Thailand, find out what’s actually going on and stop defending child rapists, you fucking asshole,” Musk wrote in the email, according to BuzzFeed News. “He’s an old, single white guy from England who’s been traveling to or living in Thailand for 30 to 40 years, mostly Pattaya Beach, until moving to Chiang Rai for a child bride who was about 12 years old at the time," the email continued." http://web.archive.org/web/20200605035828/https://www.busine...

Clearly impulsive, and he seems to have leapt to conclusions from the PI's report (I don't know exactly what was in it and how much was Musk reading between the lines) that seem to be false. But at that time, the accusation didn't seem baseless to him.

Tales of both men’s greatness diminish rapidly the closer one got to them too.

The same is true for every great figure I can think of, from Gandhi to Einstein, except perhaps Mr Rogers.

I’m still glad these people exist.

They also pushed a culture of deception and exaggeration. I dunno if iPhones are worth making this behavior normal and even worshipped.

Trump=Elon=Jobs They are all successful bullies and liars. If these are our role models...

I think I prefer not to look at stock / market cap too much in this climate of excess money sloshing around. It's just a popularity vote.

What I really have to give Tesla is: they have cars; they actually make them in factories they built; they built their own battery factory; they also invest into software side of things. And lastly they invested a ton into the charger network, which initially helped them get off the ground.

Other companies may have EVs but I feel they are not as invested / well matched to IC car manufacturer culture. But again, time and numbers will tell - who is actually making them, how many, and how well do they work.

Car companies have always been build engines and assembly of body organizations, buying other parts from whoever. Each is a bit different but nothing new about not owning all the technology. If it isn't a competitive advantage why bother?

I appreciate your comment on competitive advantage. What would it be in Tesla's case? It's not really the car design or assembly. I know they tried to play "disrupt" games with throwing software at the production line but I understand it didn't go well.

Couple things that come to mind:

1) SV software culture, kinda coming from Musk. This helps with battery pack management (important), electric motor control (important) and fancy car UI (less important perhaps but a "cool" factor. I think I count autopilot here)

2) Skin in the game. This is a bit meta, but some of the things they've done take some real guts and leadership. In their case it was do-or-die. Things like charger network, or getting the cars sold without dealerships, or building their own battery factory, or maybe the very idea of a production EV. I don't see this with incumbents - even if they have EV lines they could probably shut them down without much impact. Maybe this will not last long, I guess VW promised to switch to all electric new platforms? At that point they are kinda committed.

> It's not really the car design

I think it partly is the car design. They were the first manufacturer trying to make a mainstream car which was designed from the ground up to take advantage of being a BEV (for example with batteries flat under the floor). Others always based their electric car upon an existing ICE design despite the ensuing compromises.

This is super important. Most ICE vendors tried to take an existing vehicle, remove the ICE components and shoehorn in an electric motor. Tesla really nailed the “ground up” design (a drag coefficient of 0.24 was almost unbelievable when the model S debuted) and even now the other makers haven’t really caught up.

Volvo ECC from 1992 had 0.23, BMW had a coupe in 1938 with 0.25 and Alfa Romeo achieved 0.26 in 1952.

2016 Toyota Prius – 0.24 Cd.

Someday the sv go fast and break things culture will get them into trouble. The more careful Detroit culture gets into trouble often for unsafe cars.

In the defense of the man, he said himself that the stock was overpriced so I think blaming him for Tesla's market cap beating Toyota's is a bit much.

"and they will only drive Teslas on mars"

Are you sure that's part of the hype? I've never heard that one. People definitely have positive associations because of SpaceX, but associations don't need a weird justification like that.

"Tesla Cybertruck (pressurized edition) will be official truck of Mars"

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1197627433970589696

Anecdotally, it's been a meme for years that everything Elon Musk does is about getting to Mars. Solar City? Mars needs solar. Tesla? ICE cars don't work on Mars. Hyperloop? Big vacuum chambers like that don't make sense on earth, but on Mars they might. Personally I'm highly skeptical of this narrative, but I've seen it expressed many times by different people going back years. I think a tweet like the above is Elon Musk playing into it, throwing some red meat to his most ardent fans.

Example comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20044584

>* SpaceX will put a colony on mars, and they will only drive Teslas on mars

You keep saying some interesting things and then you say something ridiculous that makes the rest of what you say seems pretty questionable.