Tokyo — The surge in Tesla’s shares so far in June moved Elon Musk’s company even closer to displacing Toyota as the world’s most valuable carmaker.
Tesla’s valuation comes despite a gulf in the scale of the two automakers. The Palo Alto, California-based maker of electric cars produced 103,000 vehicles in the first quarter, or about 4% of the almost 2.4-million made by Toyota. Tesla became the world’s second-most valuable automaker in January, when it surpassed Volkswagen. It’s now worth more than twice the German rival, which said on Wednesday it will meet an end-of-summer deadline to start delivering its flagship ID.3 electric car.
Toyota, meanwhile, forecasts an 80% plunge in profit in 2020 and expects it could take until the first half of 2021 before the auto market recovers to pre-pandemic levels. Shares in Toyota are down about 10% so far in 2020, trading about 17% lower than the record high hit in 2015. Toyota’s market valuation includes the 14.3% of shares Toyota itself holds as treasury stock, worth around $30bn.