Elon Musk’s Tesla now has a higher market value than Ford after its stocks surged yesterday.
Shares in the company went up by around seven percent, giving it a market cap of $48.6bn.
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This makes Musk’s electric car company more valuable than Ford, which is worth $46bn. General Motor’s valuation, by comparison, is just over $50m so Tesla is getting closer to this mark.
The reason for this sudden surge in stocks is because Tesla reported a record quarter, delivering just over 25,000 cars in the first three months of 2017.
This was a 70 percent rise on the same period last year, showing that the company is really getting into its stride.
As well, Chinese company Tencent Holdings bought a five percent stake in Tesla, for almost $1.8bn last week.
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By GlobalDataIt’s perhaps also worth remembering that, while Ford and other traditional car makers are ploughing money into electric cars, it’s going to be along time before electric cars rival traditional cars by sheer volume.
The chart below shows how the two will compare globally in 2020, according to MarketLine analysts.
Despite the record sales for Tesla, these numbers are still much lower than Ford’s, which sold nearly 6.7m vehicles in 2016 alone.
Why is Tesla doing so well, when its sales are pretty low by automobile standards?
It’s all down to Musk really.
The charismatic entrepreneur has big ideas: whether that’s his attempts to get to Mars, solve high-speed travel, or make brains interact with robots, one analyst, Ben Kallo at Robert W Baird, told the BBC that the “magic dust” surrounding Musk allows the company to attract investors and the staff to make these big ideas happen.
In addition, Tesla is gearing up to release its new Model 3 car later this year. This will make a break from previous Tesla vehicles in that it is going to be more affordable.
The Model 3 will cost $35,000 compared to the likes of the Model X SUV and the Model S, which both cost more than $70,000.
The Model 3 will democratise the electronic car market more, allowing more people to access this new technology.
By comparison, BMW’s cheapest electric car has a starting price of $42,400, making Tesla’s new model a straight-forward choice for a high standard electric vehicle.
Tesla has the battery power on its side, making huge investments in its technology and building the $5bn Gigafactory in the Nevada desert to powers its future vehicles.
Its batteries are at the stage now where it can power entire islands with solar energy, so it is no surprise that these innovations in battery technology make its cars more efficient to run too.
