When will the Tesla bubble burst?

How much would you pay to park a shiny new Tesla on the driveway? Perhaps fifty thousand pounds? Or seventy thousand? If you were looking at a top-of-the range Model X, which retails in the UK at £81,000, but allows you to look down smugly on all the gas-guzzling SUVs also clogging up the streets of Chelsea, perhaps ninety or a hundred thousand? 

Well, here is an odd fact: the stock market is valuing each of those cars at more than a million dollars (£750,000). This is surely the clearest sign yet that the company’s extravagant valuation has reached bubble territory.

Earlier this week, the electric vehicle manufacturer announced blockbuster delivery figures. Tesla sold 308,600 cars in the final quarter of 2021, far more than the 263,000 the Wall Street analysts who follow the company were expecting. Amid supply bottlenecks, a chip shortage (hardly a minor matter, as anyone who has ever looked at the circuitry packed into every Tesla will testify) and, of course, the pandemic that was a considerable achievement.