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Tesla Is Worth More Than ExxonMobil, BP, Ford, VW, Nissan, and GM Combined

The company’s shares are now trading at 23,900% more than they were in 2010

Steve LeVine
Marker
Published in
3 min readJan 11, 2021

Low-angle view of the facade of Tesla Motors dealership with logo and sign in Pleasanton, California.
Photo: Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images

Tesla is on a monumental, yearlong stock price tear, and here is one way to grasp the enormity of it: It is now worth as much as big oil companies ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP, France’s Total, and Italy’s Eni combined in addition to car manufacturers General Motors, Volkswagen, Ford, and Nissan. That is, the stock market values Tesla as much as nine of the primary legacy companies that stand to be perhaps existentially disrupted if demand for electric vehicles (EVs) rises at the pace a number of forecasters expect.

A few of these companies — BP, GM, and VW — are responding to the potential threat. BP has announced a pivot away from a profit reliance on fossil fuels, and VW especially appears to be remaking itself as an EV company. Last week, GM rolled out a new rebranding campaign featuring celebrity author Malcolm Gladwell and repositioning the automaker as a future EV-centric company.

ExxonMobil and Ford, meanwhile, seem prepared to take the gamble that EVs are mere huff and puff and won’t amount to as much as the others think.

Tesla’s shares rose 7.8% on Friday. They are up about 19% for the year and more than 10 times since the beginning of 2020. If you bought Tesla shares in 2010, they would be worth 23,900% more since then.

It’s pretty hard to grasp just how big Tesla’s value has grown. Here are a couple of more stabs:

  • Tesla’s latest rise has knocked two of the world’s greatest tech kingpins off their perch: Tesla is now worth more than Facebook, and CEO Elon Musk is the world’s richest person, worth about $10 billion more than Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to Bloomberg.
  • Tesla is worth more than twice as much as the two companies that sell by far the most actual cars — VW and Toyota, whose market caps are $102 billion and $213 billion respectively. Tesla…

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Marker
Marker

Published in Marker

Marker was a publication from Medium about the intersection of business, economics, and culture. Currently inactive and not taking submissions.

Steve LeVine
Steve LeVine

Written by Steve LeVine

Editor at Large, Medium, covering the turbulence all around us, electric vehicles, batteries, social trends. Writing The Mobilist. Ex-Axios, Quartz, WSJ, NYT.

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