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Comment by hourislate | Hacker News Reader

It's frightening, at the current rate Tesla will soon be worth more than every auto manufacturer in the world put together.

Tesla market cap as of January 07, 2021 is $696.81B. It's well over 700B today.

Market Cap as of Jan 7, 2021

Toyota is $214.45B.

General Motors is $59.63B.

Ford Motor is $35.17B.

Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is $36.13B.

VW is 89.23B.

Porsche is 21B.

Audi is 83B.

Nissan is 20B.

Honda 49B.

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@fly4dat has posted some astounding charts that highlight just how overvalued Tesla has become. They’re closing in on the value of every other automaker in the world, combined. Elon Musk’s net worth is higher than the combined revenue of all his companies, plus all wages those companies have ever paid out.

https://twitter.com/fly4dat/status/1347490490564931594?s=20 https://twitter.com/fly4dat/status/1347331694915956736?s=20 https://twitter.com/fly4dat/status/1347193345714630656?s=20

I'm a Tesla bear, but I know better than to bet against it. Arguably, Tesla's implied success is priced into to these other car companies. A lot of these companies are behind on electric cars, Toyota in particular.

Tesla’s product is the stock, pure and simple. Everything they do from rushing the model Y, causing its lead engineer to leave the company, to battery day, autonomy day, $420 funding secured, the solar city merger, the semi, roadster, FSD, all of these exist to support the stock price and nothing else.

Arguably, the solar city merger was about bailing out Musk's personal holdings in a failing business.

With the end goal of maintaining the brand of Musk’s companies and pushing the stock price higher. If SolarCity had gone bankrupt, which it should have, Musk’s whole empire would have been in jeopardy

>Musk’s whole empire would have been in jeopardy

He says this himself in the SolarCity lawsuit deposition, I believe.

That deal was incredibly sketchy. His cousin was the CEO, right?

Yes, an Elon and his brother owned debt in SolarCity both personally and through other business ventures (SpaceX owned $100 mn in SolarCity debt at the time).

Court filings that have been released show that SolarCity was approaching bankruptcy, and that Musk faked the solar roof presentation to sell the deal to Tesla shareholders. The homes shown at the event were non functional.

How is Toyota in particular behind when they’re probably first with plug-in and regular hybrids? And they seem to make the best there is.

I feel like Toyota will release EV Corolla and stop this whole nonsense with Tesla. Hell, even VW took a huge chunk from Tesla in Europe with just couple models.

The market cap is already much higher than that. The share count including granted options (dilluted) per the last availabe 10Q report is already at 1.1b. That translates to a market cap of 968 billion at today's share price of 880 USD.

1T company while only a fraction of people used their product, while companies of similar value touched the lives of pretty much all the people in the world.

My impression was that GM/Ford are, for investors, pension funds with a side-hustle making the odd car. But maybe this is out of date? Are the european manufacturers also like that?

I wouldn't call them pension funds. Ford's total investments as a % of assets is pretty small, basically a rounding error. Now, you could absolutely call those two companies, truck manufactures with a side-hustle making cars, and that would be pretty accurate.

The problem with Ford is they have a ton of debt and they are in a capital-intensive, highly competitive industry and they are one the first industries hit in the event of a recession.

All car manufactures are essentially in the same situation. There's a reason this industry is rife with bankruptcies, mergers, and government ownership. Car companies all need so much capital to survive that they tend to starve very quickly. If Microsoft revenue went to $0 tomorrow, they could float on reserves for several years while they correct course. If the same situation occurred to Ford, they'd be gone by in a few months.

> at the current rate Tesla will soon be worth more than every...

company on earth put together. Just a few more x10 away.

They’re already bigger than the entire stock market of several countries.

There are many very small countries and few large ones.

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