While we were out...

The Tesla thread has been heating up a bit.

Tesla, a company that makes electric cars but not an electric truck or electric semi, hit a market capitalization of over $1 trillion earlier today as its stock soared on a spate of good and bad news for the company. One trillion dollars! That is almost in the same league as some other companies you may have heard of, like Google.

Well, not quite yet, as, as of this writing, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has a market cap of a little over $1.8 trillion, while Tesla’s is just over $1 trillion. Tesla, in any case, is in the trillionaire’s club.

Making Musk the world's first quarter-trillionaire.

Elon Musk may soon become the first person with a net worth of $300 billion.

The Tesla CEO and world’s richest man added more than $36 billion to his fortune on Monday after the automaker’s shares spiked 12.7% following the announcement that Hertz is ordering 100,000 vehicles to build out its electric vehicle rental fleet by the end of 2022.

TESLA EXTENDS GAIN TO 9.6%, HITTING $1 TRILLION MARKET VALUE https://t.co/8yQFwUqLrf pic.twitter.com/BB5RHRjyqW

— Bloomberg (@business) October 25, 2021

About that deal...

So as of Jun. '21 Hertz has $1.8b cash, $8.5b debt, and just somehow placed an order for $4.2b in vehicles from $TSLA?

Am I missing anything here?

If it's a marketing stunt to remind the world that Hertz is semi-alive it seems to have worked.https://t.co/UyxGPSD3CG $HTZZ pic.twitter.com/2aHg85AjA5

— Nate Anderson (@ClarityToast) October 25, 2021

Thank goodness that the sober, critical journalists at the NYT aren't getting swept up in the hype.

I know this is a "that's the part that bothers you?!?" moment, but suggesting that the 420 tweet was actually an attempt to take the company private rather than to manipulate the market with false claim reflects poorly on Sorkin.https://t.co/ydA811JNYD

— Mark Palko (@MarkPalko1) October 26, 2021

[note: LAT > NYT}

For final thoughts, check out this thread. It's short but the points in makes are absolutely essential. 

It sounds like a truism, but all of the truly super-rich have a cash-gushing business at the heart of their empires (FB, Amazon/AWS, Google, LVMH, Microsoft). They "won capitalism" on its traditional terms.

Elon Musk's ascent to the summit of wealth is fundamentally different .

— E.W. Niedermeyer (@Tweetermeyer) October 25, 2021