Vitaliy Katsenelson on Tesla: 80% of Tesla's value is based on Elon Musk's dreams

Tesla has a market capitalization as of this writing of $780 billion.  It made around $14 billion of profit in 2023 and $7 billion in 2024.  A good chunk of profit comes not from selling cars but from regulatory credits.  It sold fewer cars in 2024 than in 2023. Unless we see a significant shift change in battery capacity, speed of charging, and improved quality and availability of charging infrastructure, we have reached peak EV penetration (I wrote about this earlier). 

However, today Tesla is not trading based on car sales but on future dreams of self-driving robo-taxis, robots, semis, and whatever else Elon dreams up.  The car company may be worth $100–180 billion; the rest is what investors are willing to pay for Elon’s dreams.

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China looked like a great opportunity for Tesla, but may turn into a liability if the trade war intensifies. Finally, though at times he seems superhuman, Musk is constrained by the number of hours in the day.  As of today he is running Tesla, SpaceX, Twitter (x.com), xAI (the maker of Grok – a ChatGPT competitor), The Boring Company, Neuralink, and oh, yes, DOGE.  The EV market is getting more, not less, competitive.  Tesla needs an undistracted Musk. 

~ Vitaliy Katsenelson, "Current thoughts on Tesla," The Intellectual Investor, April 23, 2025