Tesla becomes the most valuable automaker

In 2020, Tesla's market capitalization overtook Toyota's to make it the most valuable automaker in the world — and by October 2021 Tesla surpassed $1 trillion in value, becoming only the sixth US company ever to reach that mark, worth roughly as much as the next ten automakers combined.

For a company that critics had spent a decade predicting would go bankrupt, it was a stunning vindication. The market was pricing in not just car sales but Tesla's lead in software, autonomy, energy storage and manufacturing.

The repricing had industry-wide consequences. Suddenly every legacy automaker faced shareholders asking why they weren't more like Tesla, and the entire industry accelerated its electric-vehicle commitments. Whatever one thinks of Tesla's valuation, its rise forced the global car industry to take the electric future seriously and to invest hundreds of billions in catching up.