Elon Musk expresses himself without a filter on Twitter, but sometimes allows to get interesting information about his vision of the business. A few days ago, in response to a tweet, he indicated who he thought was his real opponent. And it’s not a clean automaker.
By freely sharing whatever comes to mind on Twitter, Elon Musk (often) gets angry. It also allows us to learn more about how he wants to develop his business. If all the information he publishes is not to be taken at face value, some of it is indicative of his mental state, from a business point of view.
In one of his tweets published on May 25, 2022, highlighted by Teslarati, we can understand that his biggest competitor is neither a car manufacturer nor GAFAM, but simply the largest company in the oil industry: Aramco.
What is Aramco?
“ I think Tesla has the opportunity to be the most valuable company in history. When the market value of Tesla, which is into renewable energies, exceeds that of Aramco, which produces fossil fuels, we will know that the planet has a bright future ahead. ‘ Elon Musk tweeted.
Aramco, or Saudi Aramco, is the Saudi national oil and gas company. It is the largest oil producing company in the world. Saudi Arabia owns almost all of Saudi Arabia’s oil and gas resources, which account for a significant share of the world’s oil. Suffice it to say that in the current state of the conflict with Russia, they are literally the kings of oil.
While Apple has dominated the market capitalization game since the Covid pandemic, Aramco has overtaken Apple since the beginning of the year. In mid-May, its market capitalization exceeded 2,430 billion dollars (or approximately 2,263 billion euros). Elon Musk does not choose his opponents at random.
Why such a goal for Elon Musk?
There are two aspects to why Elon Musk would like to beat Aramco. The first is that Elon Musk just wants to be the best, so he’s striving for the lead. At the moment, Aramco holds the number one position in terms of market valuation, so this is the goal that must be overcome. Although Tesla has already beaten all automakers with exceptional capitalization, by exceeding $1,000 billion for some time, today the gap has widened again with Aramco.
Contempt for car manufacturers
The second aspect of this goal has a more environmental dimension. Because beating Aramco would be a strong signal that the world is changing, and that the fossil fuel industry no longer dominates the global economy. A perfect vision we already know from Elon Musk. Through Tesla, the entrepreneur wants to develop an ecosystem of solutions based on renewable and sustainable energies (as is the case with his solar roofs). Products that are developed in contrast to the solutions produced by Aramco.
In the world of Elon Musk, it is considered that he has already conquered all car manufacturers. Whether we are talking about market or product evaluation. The Tesla leader has never hidden that he has nothing more to learn, and nothing to fear, from other car manufacturers.