Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that Tesla’s value recently soared to over $1 trillion and while it has since fallen after Elon Musk sold some of his shares, it is still comfortably the world’s most valuable automaker.
The extraordinary growth and value of Tesla also means it has the resources to purchase another car manufacturer if it so wishes. So, if you were running Tesla and wanted to buy a rival, which would it be?
It’s worth noting that Tesla doesn’t appear to have any interest in purchasing another automaker and if it does, it is certainly keeping these plans very quiet. Instead, it seems more likely that it will continue to forge its own path for the foreseeable future.
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However, if Tesla was to buy another car manufacturer, it would gain access to a completely new customer base that could help to significantly boost its annual sales. For example, a takeover of Honda (currently with a market value $48.5 billion which is the worth of a publicly traded company’s outstanding shares, less than a fifth of Musk’s $288.4 billion worth), would see its combined sales climb by almost 5 million and allow Tesla to expand its footprint in new markets. Honda also builds much more affordable vehicles than Tesla, which would again help increase its customer base.
Of course, were Tesla to take over another car manufacturer, it would more likely be a fellow brand focusing solely on electric vehicles rather than a legacy automaker, as ICE powertrains are on their way out to be replaced by EVs.
Is any of this likely to happen? In all likelihood, not. Even if it wanted to, such take overs are much more complex in nature than simply having the money to buy. And besides, Elon Musk has repeatedly said that the success of Tesla should be judged on how it has contributed to the electrification of the auto industry as a whole, not whether it can become the world’s most prolific manufacturer of cars.
