Elon Musk

[Pat Mustard]

Tesla's valuation beggars belief.  $556 billion is absolutely ludicrious.  Underpants-on-head and butterfly nets territory.  It might be a failure of imagination on my part but I don't see it.

In terms of capital investment it may not be off. In terms of market outlook Tesla is certainly overvalued. They're about to get swamped by cheap Chinese EVs, and Tesla won't be able to cut MSRP in order to compete because they have so much plant that still isn't paid off.

Before he fired off all his supercharger team because he is a spoilt little baby, I could see the company being actually worth maybe $20bn. But now, nothing, it's got four very old models that are badly designed and made, a new model which is a company killer, a couple of vapourware maybe models coming out some time between 2017 and the heat death of the universe, a "robotaxi" selling point that takes all of five seconds to take apart (if the robotaxi idea was a tenth as good as Galaxy Brain is making out it is, Tesla would have been re-directed to become a integrated car manufacturer/taxi company a few years ago) and a battery charging network that was slightly better than his competitors (a few years ago I'd have said the batteries too, but Tesla largely doesn't make its own batteries any more).

It's a company that ripe for squeezing into bankruptcy, not helped by the fact that it's being run by the Avatar of Dunning-Kruger and his yes men and women.