WASHINGTON: The shares of Tesla jumped as much as 5.6% on Friday, pushing the electric-car maker’s market capitalisation to more than $800 billion for the first time ever and inching closer to the trillion-dollar club.
Tesla’s rally has helped Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk surpass Amazon boss Jeff Bezos to become the world’s richest man.
At today’s session high, Musk’s 21% stake in the automaker contributes more than $170 billion to his net worth, dwarfing the combined market capitalization of General Motors, Ford Motor and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, the three Detroit automakers.
In the previous session, Tesla’s market value crossed $774 billion, making it Wall Street’s fifth most valuable company, just behind Google-parent Alphabet and ahead of Facebook.
The company’s fortunes are an anomaly as the 17-year-old automaker has production that is just a fraction of large rivals by sales such as Toyota Motor, Volkswagen and General Motors.
Furthermore, the US auto safety regulator National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said it would not grant a petition seeking a formal review of 662,000 Tesla vehicles for claims of sudden unintended acceleration (SUA).
The said its review of the December 2019 petition into 2012-2020 model year Tesla Model S, Model X, Model Y and Model 3 vehicles found the incidents cited “were caused by pedal misapplication.
NHTSA found no evidence of fault in the accelerator pedal assemblies, motor control systems, or brake systems that contributed to the cited incidents. The petition cited 232 complaints including 203 crashes and the agency opened a formal review into the petition in January 2020.
