Give it a few years. I'm still skeptical that Tesla should be worth more than all the other auto companies combined.
Which other automaker does that?
Edit: Having said that, I bought them long ago at their IPO price and sold long ago when they were around 300 pre-splits. The current valuation is indeed a little risky.
1) still has a lot of scaling to get through before they reach anything close to the sales volume of their competition. Elon talks a lot about scaling but Tesla is still microscopic compared to other manufacturers. The business operations of a much larger company will present challenges in communication, structure, quality assurance, legal liabilities in various jurisdictions, not to mention the struggle of sourcing battery components. Tesla scaling is not as easy as spinning up additional Kubernetes pods.
2) The competition WILL electrify. Tesla is not likely to have more than 6 models in the coming years yet they will compete with hundreds of models from different companies that cater to different niches. Any company that offers an electric vehicle with physical buttons instead of a touchscreen has my attention.
3) Tesla workers will unionize and/or mature away from the company. I grew up around Detroit and witnessed a lot of labor dynamics with the UAW. Assuming Tesla succeeds in preventing a union the workers will eventually cash out their stock and leave for better offers at other automotive companies or spin off their services into tier automotive groups. Why write software for Tesla robots when the robot company will hire you to write software for all auto companies?
Eventually, of course, if a security keeps only going up, this mantra will become true. The point is that sometimes, a bet that seems like a sure thing will blow up spectacularly. And that not everyone who takes such a bet is obviously wrong.
Also, they're an energy company too, which means at least some of their speculative valuation is in energy, which is a totally different market.
Really, it's priced higher because people like the brand, even if it's run by someone easily distracted who used shareholder money to bail out his cousin's solar business who goes around making 420 tweets, and that's when he's not calling people pedophiles. Oh, and their hubris kills people.
Killing people comes with manufacturing automobiles. Takata airbags and other "cost cutting" disasters, selling cars that can go 300+ km/h which can't be legally driven at that speed anywhere except race tracks and German autobahns, making safety features such as seat belts, side mirrors, traction control etc. optional until the government regulators have had enough deaths and mandate it...