Tesla CEO Elon Musk talked about the possibility of a merger between his electric automotive company and a legacy carmaker. Musk made the comments while accepting the Axel Springer Award in Germany on Tuesday.
Musk has managed to maintain a number of notable relationships with the CEOs of competing companies. The most obvious is with Volkswagen Board Chairman Herbert Diess, but Musk has been supportive of other companies that are attempting to transition to sustainability. However, Tesla is the only fully-electric automaker that maintains a relatively active competition with some of the world’s largest and most popular petrol-engine companies. After Tesla’s recent surge in stock price, which has catapulted the company to become the most valuable in the world, the possibility of Tesla partnering up or merging with another company is certainly on the table.
Tesla could even end up buying an automaker because of its massive valuation, which stands at $554.29 billion at the time of writing. This could supply Tesla with the infrastructure to begin a massive effort to manufacture cars, and could also accelerate the sustainable energy transition even more. Because of the possibility, Musk was asked about Tesla obtaining another car company during his award acceptance in Germany.
CEO Mathias Döpfner questioned whether Tesla had ever seriously considered this option, to which Musk replied:
“We are definitely not going to launch a hostile takeover, but if somebody said it would be a good idea to Merge with Tesla, we would have this conversation.”
While Musk didn’t expand on any current talks Tesla may or may not be in with other car companies, the quote certainly is thought invoking. Tesla obtaining another car company has a wide variety of benefits, and the fact that Musk would be open to the idea is interesting, to say the least.
For example, if Tesla were to merge with Volkswagen, it would establish a solid foundation for European manufacturing and would be highly advantageous considering the German company has a notable EV infrastructure already. Even though Volkswagen has admitted Tesla is several years ahead in terms of EVs, having less of a transition for Tesla to flip manufacturing facilities to be EV-specific would certainly help the timing of the whole process. If Tesla were to obtain a company like Ford, which doesn’t have any released EVs, it might cause a delay in turning production plants from gas-specific to EV-specific.
However, it is a much more complex issue than that, and it comes down to far too many factors to list.
Musk’s full Award Ceremony and interview is available below.
