Tesla is like BMW + some BMW suppliers. In that way Tesla is really 4 companies right now, a car company, a component supplier to Toyota and others, a battery company, and a solar company. Energizer is worth 3.3B and has 5,000 workers. Solar city is 'worth' ~$6 billion.
Thus, directly comparing Tesla to BMW is missing the boat.
Are you familiar with how companies are valued? You only seem to be factoring in present considerations. What might happen in the future is a major factor in determining these prices, especially in an industry with so much potential upheaval not too far away. (e.g. what if Tesla profits are 10x BMW's in 20 years? Then they are probably undervalued right now.) If you are confident in your assessment though, you can always put money behind it and make yourself rich.
If there is a big shift overall to electric then the capital expenditures that BMW has already made aren't so valuable.
Yes, they (BMW) are indeed making money now. But have they invested in the right direction? I don't know. Allegedly the market does (as reflected in the relative stock prices)... but the market is often stupid. It is often smart too, but it can sometimes be hard to tell.
isn't BMW behind the proposed european standard for electric vehicle charging?
This here. BMW makes more in profit than Tesla is earning in revenue. BMW sells 2.5 million cars a year, 25 times as many as Tesla. And both companies are valued roughly the same? How? Totally overvalued. If Tesla catches up to BMW 25x output (and this is a big If) would it then be worth a trillion dollar? No this is already priced into the stock.
> Musk has said that making electric cars is easier than making internal combustion ones. So, if Musk shows that electric cars can be profitable, won't everyone else add a huge amount of competition?
CWhat is not easy to make is a self-driving car and Teslas battery-Gigafactory also an advantage. Still the statement that an electric car is simple is troubling for a luxury/premium brand. You generally don't want to be in a market where things are easy to make and there is disruption by a race-to-the-bottom. I think the big car makers are more at risk having their lunch eaten by upcoming cheap car makers in China or India than Tesla.