But Tesla didn't 'invent' electric cars, or electric motors, or motor controllers, or batteries, etc. I'm sure they have put lots of R&D effort and money into their implementations and execution of these things, but the fundamentals are pretty basic stuff that's been around for a while. At least since the Prius, or the GM electric car in the 90's, or any of the much earlier stuff.

I'm not an expert in the area, but I am not aware of a game-changing implementation that Tesla has made, is there one? Like, did they make electric motors better in some fundamental, un-reproducable way? That would be a 'moat' they could use to stave off competitors. Or is their battery tech a game changer? From my lay perspective, it appears that their battery manufacturing capacity (i.e., gigafactory) may be, but the battery tech itself is more or less industry-standad stuff.

I guess the big question is what is their competitive advantage compared to Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, etc.? I ask that not as an attack, but a genuine question to ponder. Nissan has the Leaf in production today, they have all the tech necessary to develop and manufacture and bring to market an electric vehicle. What's stopping them from launching a 'Tesla-killer' under their Infinity brand aimed at the same market as Tesla? It appears nothing is, at least nothing technological. It's probably just a product-market fit question, and as soon as the market for a high end electric vehicle is big enough (thanks to Tesla) then they probably will. And at that point, what Tesla is just another car manufacturer, but one that seems to suck at manufacturing and bringing cars to market. Those kinks may be ironed out, but in the long term it seems that they should be expected to settle into a position as one of many car maker options, where consumers choose a Tesla for similar reasons as one would choose any other car. So, from that perspective, the valuation seems spurious.

Is the play all about self-driving cars? Is the promise of self-driving cars the only thing behind Tesla and Uber? Then again, I ask what advantage these players have, if any. The incumbents may be slow, but do you really think Toyota, GM, Ford, etc. aren't working on this stuff too? They are. Every major car manufacturer has a self-driving car program in the works. Heck, Mercedes has been working on it since at least the late 90's when they brought to market the first radar-assisted cruise controls.

I don't mean to shit all over Tesla here, as surely their existence has sped up the development and public perception of electric vehicles in a major way. And I get the Musk fanboy-ism, he's totally cool and his portfolio of companies is equally totally cool (even though, contrary to perception, he did not in fact 'found' Tesla, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning did, Elon came in at the series A round of funding). And their cars are totally awesome, and that's something to admire. But as far as their current market valuation, from a totally dispassionate analysis, it seems irrational. Long-term it's hard to see them as justifying a valuation at multiples that much higher than the incumbents. I just don't see the logic. But maybe it doesn't have to be 'logical,' maybe financial markets aren't entirely rational, and maybe that's OK.