- General Motors viewed Tesla in 2009 as “a bunch of engineers playing with laptop batteries.”
- Nikola CEO Steve Girsky, who served on GM’s board, recalled being told so in a recent quiz.
- Tesla now ranks among the world’s most valuable companies with a market capitalization of $830 billion.
One of Tesla’s biggest rivals completely trashed Elon Musk’s automaker less than 15 years ago, Nikola CEO Steve Girsky recalled during a recent fireside chat.
Girsky, who took over as Nikola CEO in August, served on General Motors’ board of directors between 2009 and 2016. He said last week that he raised the topic of Tesla shortly after joining the auto giant, according to a transcript provided by AlfaSense/. Sentio.
“I asked about Tesla and was told it was a bunch of engineers playing with laptop batteries,” Girsky said.
He added, “This was the conventional wisdom at the time and we know how it turned out.” “Tesla gets 10-year jump on entire industry.”
Girsky shared the anecdote to underscore his belief that Nikola has a similar edge over the competition.
“The big guys are killing the zero-emission trucking industry,” he said. “I know they’re playing with prototypes, but they believe this technology is a decade away at the earliest.”
Tesla, a leader in battery technology and electric vehicles, has blown away most of the auto industry’s expectations in recent years.
The company’s annual report shows that its revenue increased from approximately $112 million in 2009 to $81 billion last year, and it went from a net loss of $254 million to a net income of $12.6 billion.
The automaker’s market capitalization has also grown from about $2 billion when it joined the stock market in 2010 to about $830 billion today. It has now overtaken GM, worth $46 billion, and even overtaken Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, worth $807 billion.
Auto executives have expressed skepticism about Musk’s EV company on several occasions.
Former Ford GM and Chrysler executive Bob Lutz declared in February 2020 after Tesla’s stock more than tripled in six months, “It’s driven entirely by psychology or almost a mass psychosis.” Shares of Musk’s company have increased more than fivefold since Lutz’s comments.
Source: markets.businessinsider.com
