It's valued higher than Ford, who made...TWENTY FIVE times as many cars in the first quarter of this year. For every car Tesla produced, Ford made 25.
I'd be curious simply to see the book value of Ford vs. Tesla. No doubt Ford owns dozens if not hundreds of valuable properties all around the world. Tesla owns one factory in California and little else.
A lot of speculators are confusing Tesla for "tech". A true tech business is usually software-related, since software can scale up at virtually zero cost. Someone can pay a team of coders $10 million to create an app and if they're lucky it'll be on 100 million phones in six months. Cars are a traditional product -- scaling is horrendously expensive, slow, and risky.
The main reason investors are being fooled into thinking Tesla is "tech" is because it's founder came from a true tech enterprise (PayPal) and the factory is in the Bay Area. Same thing with the boring company, hyperloop, and the solar panels.
One of my best friends is a tech and nanoscience writer, and he asserts that Musk has invented almost nothing. He is a hype man. He has seduced nerds and libertarians alike.
Yeah he hasn't invented alot, just been incredibly in his pursuit of the way things should be instead of the way things are. We already had electric cars, he took electric cars, made them fast, sexy, and is in the process of vastly lowering their costs/availability. We had the ability to drive, he took his fleet of cars, put data collection devices on them, and created what is essentially a giant data center for machine learning to feast on. He's pushing the WHOLE industry to get on board with autonomous driving, google's been puttering around with this tech for like a decade until Tesla got serious about it, all of a sudden every single major car producer is going ham to get there soon so Tesla doesn't take their lunch.
He's "seduced" people because the things he brings to the market have the potential power to actually truly change the way we live on a day to day basis, same as the iphone or something. That has value that is really really hard to actually put in a valuation. He could totally flame out on some of his ventures, but if any of them stick they tend to be pretty world changing.
Also I think people dont realize how big of a deal the gigafactory in nevada is, it alone will produce the same amount of batteries that the entire world did in 2013.
I like the company, i like musk and I love his vision but I'm not about to risk any money on Tesla.
I read an article somewhere that explained China is building a bunch of battery factories that will outscale Tesla's gigafactory in terms of production and price.
Tesla's solar roof is extremely expensive and the panels are not nearly as efficient (or affordable) as SunPower panels or the forthcoming First Solar Model 6's. At the time Tesla acquired it, SolarCity was a company headed towards bankruptcy and it had alarming special purpose vehicles on their final 10-K filing. I think Tesla shareholders got a rotten deal out of SolarCity. Also a solar roof is nothing new. Numerous companies have staked it all on a solar roof and all have gone under. Tesla is different and have mainstream recognition so it could work out for it. I hope it does.
It is an anomaly for Tesla to turn a profit. If the company takes off it wont matter because it could be in its building phase, it can take a bit with tech companies.
None of this means Tesla will fail in the long run but it has convinced me to avoid the stock, and I'm a sucker for all things clean energy. I personally feel the company is grossly overvalued.
I've read on a forum that Tesla will lose money on each Model S they roll out but I doubt this is true and do not consider this in my opinion above.