At the time of writing, Tesla is not only the most valuable car company in the world - it is by far the most valuable car manufacturer by a massive margin. As of April 2021, it is worth around $635 billion - placing it the 8th most valuable company in the whole world. In fact, there are only two companies in the world outside of the United States currently with a higher value. The second most valuable car brand is Toyota at about $212 Billion - only one-third the value despite producing 20x the number of cars in 2020.

Few will argue Tesla's stunning success. Now it seems poised and ready to launch itself into becoming one of the largest car manufacturers in the world. Elon Musk has said he foresees the company producing 20 million cars annually - twice the number produced by Toyota (the largest car manufacturer) annually! But how and why did Tesla make it? For every success story, the way is strewn with the corpses of many more failures. Here are 8 reasons why Tesla became the most valuable are car company in the world.

8 The Power Of The Elon Musk Brand

Before Tesla, Elon Musk had already established his credentials with other projects like PayPal. Elon Musk is a bit like Steve Jobs, an interesting, inspiring, unorthodox, confident, unusual, controversial, and colorful character. His personality alone draws attention and as the saying goes, all publicity is good publicity.

Elon Musk by himself has the ability to draw the attention of the masses, the press and the investors - with that publicity comes investment.

Related: Unmasking Elon Musk: What You Don’t Know

7 Uncompromising

Like Steve Jobs, Elon Musk has been uncompromising. Apple would never settle for anything less than what they thought was the very best feasibly possible. And they would strive over and over again until they achieved that. And that's exactly what Tesla has done.

Furthermore, they haven't compromised on their policy of being zero emissions. Even their Giga Factories are laced with solar panels. They never relented or partnered with other polluting car companies or took easy routes and released sub-par cars or hybrids. They stuck to their guns throughout.

6 Had A Clear Vision

It is vital for companies to have a clear vision of what they want, when they want it, and how they plan to get it. Elon Musk has always had a clear vision of the future. He has always planned to make a large car company selling only high-performance EVs.

And that is just what he has achieved, and perhaps he has — more than anyone else — showed the world how EVs can be just as good, or even better, than any internal combustion car in power and, increasingly, range, and now it seems that in the near future even charging times will be as good as refueling time.

5 Focused on High-Performance Sexy Cars

In 2010, when the first modern mass-produced electric vehicles (like the Nissan Leaf) and hybrid vehicles (like the Toyota Prius) were rolling off the assembly line, they had very limited range (about 67 miles for the Leaf) or were economical just to save money on fuel. They weren't vehicles that would have a chance to compete with high-performance gasoline cars.

But Tesla leapfrogged that and jumped straight into producing luxury high-end electric cars that would totally remove the stigma that electrical vehicles were the poor cousins of the gasoline car.

Related: Here's Everything We Know About The 2021 Tesla Roadster

4 A Break From Conventional Wisdom

Most car companies didn't see the future in electrical vehicles. Conventional wisdom was that the technology was a long way off and that they would only slowly be adopted with small incremental improvements.

Via Twitter

In jumping from the humble cars like the Prius or the Leaf, straight into performance cars, Tesla shattered the conventional wisdom of the time.

Related: This Is The Coolest Feature Of The Nissan Leaf Interior

3 Handles Its Own Supply Chain

Supply chains are hugely important, and when they go wrong, they can easily be the death of companies. Tesla decided to control its whole supply chain. This has the disadvantage of very high upfront costs but in the long run, it gives a lot more control.

It both saves money and builds the brand. You know that Tesla really did build that car instead of outsourcing much of it to third parties.

2 Hired Great Employees

Maybe it was the Elon Musk brand that has the allure, but the company has managed to attract a great team of some of the world's very best engineers. Perhaps it was also due to being a Silicon Valley company where Tesla could pull on an immense pool of talent.

This is unlike all the other major car manufactures - none of which are based in Silicon Valley. Here he could also pull from the enterprising talent that heads to Silicon Valley looking for the next breakthrough technology and a place full of enterprising startups.

1 Think Big, Play Hard

Few start-up car companies ever succeed in breaking into this industry. It is a very difficult industry to break into, not least because of the massive upfront startup costs and taking many years before actually turning a profit. Many companies would be happy with a more cautious approach. Start small and slowly grow bigger over time.

But Tesla has always planned to be big. The first factories they built are the Giga Factories. They have always determined to shoot for the stars and go for gold.

In conclusion, Tesla is a truly remarkable success story. Some of that may be luck and good publicity, but a lot more was a good strategy and seeing the future for what they could make it to be, not what conventional wisdom said it was.

Next: A Detailed History Of Tesla And SpaceX