[mike_d]

Which is a problem in itself.

Tesla with a 2% market share in the US, is valued more than Toyota, Volkswagen, Daimler, General Motors, and BMW combined (40% of the domestic market).

Toyota makes about $2,500 profit for every car sold. Tesla would need to make $50,000 per unit sold on average, or basically 100% profit on a Model 3, to justify the market cap.

[rawtxapp]

Personally, I'm with you, I just don't see how Tesla's valuation is justified. Their cars have QC issues and they have very formidable competitors. If I had to buy a car, I'd pick the Porsche Taycan over any Tesla any time of the day (except maybe the Roadster, but it's not out yet).

That said, I have a few friends who bought it's shares and their rationale is that it's a "clean energy play", far bigger than cars and that their brand is going to be as valuable as Apple. Only time will tell I guess, everyone can put their money where their mouth is and shorting Tesla has been a pretty bad proposition so far.

[wutXthree]

Price is a function of supply and demand.

[loceng]

And decentralized demand - e.g. individual investors and institutions to a degree (individuals who give their buy-sell power to an org) - will be more accurately voting at least than say the gullible layperson buying into the Bitcoin hype-MLM; most people buying Tesla stock arguably mostly aren't betting/investing based on nothing - there are many good, valid reasons to see Tesla taking off exponentially and even owning 40%+ of the EV market - and they're optimizing for battery-solar tech and energy business as well.

P.S. I'm not trying to convince anyone here of Tesla's value, I've shared some of my thoughts before, and there are plenty other people who have done a thorough job detailing the ecosystem and its potential.

[patd]

Overvalued, maybe. But comparing last year production of cars is in my opinion a bad metrics to compare Tesla to other automakers.

First Tesla is growing fast so that $50k will drastically go down in the coming years.

Tesla is more vertically integrated so you have to include the valuation of all the dealerships, parts of their suppliers, the charging network, ...

And third there are the “other” businesses like the battery storage, solar roofs, software revenue, ...

So overall the numbers of cars produced is probably too simplistic to compare them.

[noxer]

Today value isn't about what Tesla does today, its about what people think Tesla will deliver in the future. The numbers and profits per car are basically meaningless. You buy if you think the number will become better not of you think they are awesome now and there isn't much progress possible anymore.

[bob33212]

Stock prices do not reflect current profits. Imagine if they did. If tsla was currently 50/share to be inline with your metric. How would you stop people from buying it at 60? Because using your math they will be worth 75+ next year when the other factories come online.

[rchaud]

It's supposed to at least correlate with future free cash flow, which it doesn't do either. Sometimes I wonder if quantitative easing and corp tax cuts have distorted the stock market past the point where Benjamin Graham-style theories of value investing have become invalidated.

[bob33212]

Sounds like AMZN in 1999

[dmak]

May I ask why are you comparing with ICE automakers? Tesla is much more than that. Wouldn’t your comparison be like only comparing Amazon’s Kindle vertical with the rest of the ebook reader market?

[sneak]

I agree that the valuation is silly.

I don't agree that it's a problem. Why do you think that a silly valuation is a problem?