In a recent Electrek post, the news is delivered with understatement: Tesla now has a larger market capitalization than Ford Motor Company.
However, the article makes certain points that are worth thinking about before the enthusiasm gets out of hand: Namely that market cap is a measure of stock value rather than necessarily the fundamentals of a company, although those too are continuously increasing for Tesla as it builds out its Gigafactory 1 in Nevada, solar panel factory in New York, and various other facilities.
Ford remains overwhelmingly dominant compared to Tesla in its pace of manufacturing and delivery, and yet the news is a milestone in a trend that has been unfolding for years. Tesla has been continuously advancing its ability to produce, and despite occasional dips in stock price, the stock has kept well ahead of the shockwave.
A company that was not supposed to exist according to...well...everyone...now has a market capitalization of $45 billion, after a decade and a half of growth and hard-fought survival at times. But here's where the future interest comes into light: Tesla is no longer "merely" a car company.
Tesla is growing both up and down its own supply chain - expanding across its own entire industrial sector - entering the energy production, energy storage, and energy management industries that will increase the value of its cars. It is also creating an entire industrial science of the factory-as-product, rooted in designing whole factories as if they were single products limited only by the basic laws of physics.
A lot of OEM companies extend tendrils into their own supply chains, but these are usually just hedges - they maintain a basic capacity to serve their own needs if a major supplier has a serious interruption. And, of course, as leverage in negotiations with their suppliers if someone is trying to strong-arm them. That is not what Tesla is doing.
Tesla is out for conquest. Having watched this company evolve since a decade ago, and watched its vision evolve, I can say that it intends - over the longest term - to become the world's dominant producer of clean energy infrastructure, related systems, and the building and transport technologies that utilize it.
Disaster is entirely possible when ambitions are so grand, and Tesla has averted it so often that one has to wonder if Musk's genius is not mixed in with some strain of adrenaline-driven recklessness, but sooner or later you have to admit that the best guide to what someone will achieve in the future is what they have already achieved in the past.
Tesla has the tools, the talent, and the ambition to own the world. I think they will. They will change the energy and transport systems of the world, and possibly the basic way in which we manufacture on a large scale. Over decades, I think they will surpass all other automakers, and then surpass them all combined, beginning to then challenge companies like Apple and Google - who have themselves shown awareness of the danger by experimenting with entering the auto market. The world's first trillion-dollar company may be among us.
But knock on wood. Knock on it soundly.
Submitted March 27, 2017 at 07:53PM by KubrickIsMyCopilot http://ift.tt/2nbJ0aw