A few years ago, I wrote something on Quora that caught fire—over 700,000 views. The question was simple: “Elon Musk has disrupted many industries. What will be next?”
Here’s what I wrote back then:
In a recent tweet, Elon Musk announced that his biggest competitor wasn’t Google, Amazon, any tech company, or any car manufacturer.
His biggest competitor would be Aramco (Saudi Arabia’s national oil company), which at the time was the most valuable publicly traded company in the world with a market cap of $8.98 trillion. (Note: Aramco’s valuation has since dropped to around $1.8-2 trillion. This collapse in valuation is exactly what happens when markets reprice entire industries. It’s also why Musk is now targeting a $10 trillion valuation for Tesla—he’s positioning the company to capture not the oil market, but something bigger: the entire energy infrastructure of the future.)
By comparison, Tesla was worth $728 billion at the time. Volkswagen was at $95 billion.
Selling cars, batteries, and autonomous driving software is Tesla’s way of generating short-term profit. But in the long term, the real target market is energy. That’s one of the reasons Tesla encourages and helps other automakers (by opening its patents) to go electric—to replace hydrocarbons with electricity. And it’s also why Tesla acquired SolarCity, a solar panel manufacturer.
The limitation of solar panels is that they don’t allow constant electricity production. So to solve this problem, you need batteries—which Tesla supplies to SolarCity. (Note: This is even more true today. Tesla Energy has become a massive business, with utility-scale battery installations like the Megapack generating billions in revenue. The energy storage problem I identified is now Tesla’s second-biggest growth driver after vehicles.)
This is just my opinion, but I think the best long-term alternative is thermonuclear fusion, which will produce more energy than fission nuclear plants and also solves the problem of long-lived radioactive waste. But we’re still far from that. Fusion is still in the experimental stage and not yet ready for commercial application. However, China is very advanced on this front with its HL-2M Tokamak. (Note: Since I wrote this, fusion has made significant progress. Multiple startups are racing toward commercial fusion, and China’s EAST reactor has achieved plasma temperatures of 120 million degrees Celsius for over 1,000 seconds. But we’re still 10-20 years away from grid-scale deployment. The timeline I predicted was correct—fusion is the endgame, but it’s not here yet.)
But the real story wasn’t about oil versus electricity. It was about recognizing that Tesla was never really a car company.
Fast forward to Davos 2025, and Musk just made his most explicit declaration yet about what Tesla actually is—and why it could hit that $10 trillion valuation.
“100 miles by 100 miles of solar—160 kilometers by 160 kilometers—is enough to power the entire United States. It’s a very small percentage of the area of the US to generate all the electricity the country uses.”
Let that sink in. 160km x 160km. That’s roughly 25,600 square kilometers. The US has 9.8 million square kilometers of land.
We’re talking about 0.26% of America’s landmass to power everything.
This isn’t just a statement about energy feasibility. It’s a declaration about what Tesla is building: a complete energy infrastructure company that happens to also make cars.
And here’s what most investors miss: the electricity market is orders of magnitude larger than the automotive market.
The global automotive market is worth roughly $3 trillion annually. The global electricity market? Over $2.8 trillion per year in generation alone—and that’s before you count transmission, distribution, and storage infrastructure, which pushes the total addressable market past $6 trillion annually. We’re talking about the fundamental infrastructure that powers modern civilization.
And that market is about to explode. Global electricity demand is projected to double by 2050. Data centers, AI training clusters, electric vehicles, heat pumps, industrial electrification—everything is converging on one resource: electricity. The question isn’t whether demand will grow. The question is: who will supply it?
Here’s where the China problem becomes a Tesla opportunity.
China understood this decade ago.
They invested massively in both nuclear and solar manufacturing, building overcapacity deliberately to drive costs down and dominate global supply chains.
Chinese solar panels now account for over 80% of global production. They’ve driven electricity costs down so dramatically that industrial electricity in China is now 30-40% cheaper than in Europe or the United States.
This created a strategic vulnerability for the West. Europe and the US became dependent on Chinese solar manufacturing at exactly the moment when geopolitical tensions escalated.
Tariffs, supply chain security concerns, and the push for domestic energy independence have created a massive opening in the market.
Europe needs to build hundreds of gigawatts of solar capacity to meet its 2030 climate targets. The US needs similar scale to power its industrial base and data center buildout.
Both continents want to reduce dependence on Chinese manufacturing.
The problem?
There’s no Western manufacturer with the scale, vertical integration, and cost structure to compete.
Except Tesla.
Tesla has something no other Western company possesses: a proven playbook for entering a Chinese-dominated market, building massive-scale manufacturing, and driving costs down through vertical integration and innovation.
They did it with electric vehicles. Now they’re doing it with energy.
Tesla Energy isn’t just selling solar panels. They’re building vertically integrated energy systems—solar generation, battery storage, grid management software, and installation services—all designed and manufactured in-house with costs that can actually compete with Chinese imports.
And they’re scaling fast. Tesla is building Megapack factories in the US and planning expansion into Europe. They’re positioning to become the primary solar supplier for both continents, capturing a market opportunity worth trillions.
This is why analyzing Tesla based on its current automotive market is a fundamental mistake.
When you invest in Tesla, you’re not betting on how many cars they’ll sell next quarter.
You’re betting on their ability to identify and dominate emerging markets before anyone else realizes those markets exist.
They did it with EVs when everyone said it was impossible. They’re doing it with energy storage right now. They’ll do it with robotaxis and humanoid robots. And they’re positioning to do it with solar at continental scale.
What Tesla accomplished in automotive—going from zero to the most valuable car company in the world—they’re about to do in energy. Except the energy market is 2-3x larger than automotive. And the margin profile is better. And the moat is deeper because of vertical integration.
This isn’t incremental value. This is trillions of dollars in additional market cap that the market hasn’t priced in yet because investors are still trying to value Tesla as a car company.
When I wrote that Quora answer, I understood the energy angle, but I underestimated how fast it would become Tesla’s defining business. Cars are the Trojan horse. Energy is the empire.
Tesla Energy generated over $6 billion in revenue in 2024.
That’s not just car batteries—that’s utility-scale energy storage, solar installations, grid infrastructure, and virtual power plants. The energy storage problem I identified years ago is now a solved problem at scale, and Tesla owns the solution.
But here’s what’s changed since I wrote that answer: SpaceX has become an energy company too.
SpaceX isn’t just launching satellites anymore. They’re building the infrastructure for space-based data centers—massive computing facilities in orbit that run entirely on solar power.
Why? Because in space, solar is 24/7. No clouds. No night. No atmospheric interference. Just constant, uninterrupted energy from the sun at higher intensity than anything achievable on Earth.
Think about the compounding effect: Starlink satellites already run on solar.
Future Mars colonies will run on solar. Space-based data centers will run on solar. And all of it requires the exact same technology stack Tesla is building for Earth—solar panels, battery storage, and power management systems.
But here’s where it gets truly unprecedented: what if Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI merge?
There’s been talk—speculation, really—about a potential consolidation of Musk’s empire. Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI under one corporate structure. If that happens, we’re not talking about a $10 trillion company. We’re talking about the most valuable enterprise in human history with no historical precedent to compare it to.
Think about what that entity would control:
Tesla: Electric vehicles, autonomous driving, robotics (Optimus), energy generation (solar), energy storage (Megapack), grid infrastructure
SpaceX: Launch capability, satellite networks (Starlink), space-based infrastructure, orbital data centers, Mars colonization
xAI: Frontier AI models, computing infrastructure, the intelligence layer that powers autonomous systems across all three companies
The synergies are almost absurd. xAI trains models that power Tesla’s Full Self-Driving and Optimus robots. SpaceX launches the satellites that connect Tesla vehicles and provide global internet. Tesla batteries power SpaceX ground stations and future Mars bases.
SpaceX builds the orbital data centers that run xAI’s training clusters on 24/7 space-based solar power. xAI optimizes energy distribution across Tesla’s virtual power plants.
It’s a closed-loop industrial ecosystem operating across two planets with AI as the connective tissue. There is no historical precedent for this. Not Standard Oil. Not AT&T. Not even the East India Company at its peak controlled infrastructure that spanned Earth and space.
Here’s the thesis I’ve developed since that Quora answer: Solar is the bridge energy. Nuclear fusion is the endgame. But the bridge matters—a lot.
Solar won’t replace everything. It can’t power a steel foundry in the dead of winter in Norway. It can’t provide the baseload stability that modern grids demand without massive overbuilding and storage. That’s where nuclear comes in—fission today, fusion tomorrow.
But here’s what I got wrong in my original answer: I thought we needed to wait for fusion. We don’t. Solar + storage is good enough right now to power the majority of human energy needs, and it’s the only option that scales to space.
Nuclear will complement it, not replace it.
Solar handles distributed, variable demand on Earth and all demand in space. Nuclear handles baseload and industrial-scale power on Earth. They’re not competitors—they’re complementary pieces of a complete energy system.
Musk understands this better than anyone. Tesla Energy is scaling solar + storage for residential, commercial, and utility applications on Earth.
SpaceX is betting everything—satellites, Mars missions, orbital infrastructure—on solar because there is literally no other option in space until fusion reactors become small and reliable enough to fit on spacecraft.
And when fusion does arrive in 10-20 years, it’ll slot right into the same infrastructure Tesla and SpaceX are building today. The grid integration systems, the power management software, the battery technology—all of it transfers directly to managing fusion power plants.
Tesla is the only company in my portfolio where I don’t ask whether it’s overvalued or undervalued.
That’s not because I’m a blind optimist. It’s because Tesla operates like a startup with 10-20 year projections based on innovations and market positions that don’t exist yet, not on its current market (electric vehicles).
Trying to value Tesla based on car sales is a fundamental error. You’re not valuing one company—you’re valuing five:
An automotive company (EVs)
An autonomous transportation network (robotaxis)
A robotics company (Optimus)
An energy infrastructure company (solar + storage)
A battery technology company (cell manufacturing)
And if the merger happens, you add:
A space transportation and infrastructure company (SpaceX)
A frontier AI company (xAI)
How do you value that? You can’t use traditional multiples. There’s no comparable. It’s genuinely unprecedented.
The sun radiates 173,000 terawatts of power continuously. Capturing even a tiny fraction of that is worth trillions. And Musk is building the only company—or empire of companies—positioned to do it at planetary scale.
We recently published a complete deep-dive research report on SpaceX that you can read here.
The Largest IPO in History: Why SpaceX Will Become One of the Most Valuable Companies in the World
Today I Want to Talk About SpaceX Again - And Why I’m More Bullish Than Ever
And I’m currently working on the most comprehensive research analysis of Tesla ever published on Macro Notes. This isn’t a surface-level valuation exercise. This is years of work—interviews with former employees in key positions, deep market analysis, proprietary data on Tesla’s operations that has never been published before, and a complete breakdown of every business unit from energy to robotics to autonomous driving.
If you want to understand where Tesla is actually headed—not where Wall Street thinks it’s headed—you need to read this report.
Subscribe to Macro Notes Premium so you don’t miss it.
If you’re already subscribed, you’ll receive the first part in a few days.
In this edition, we’re diving deep into the economics of Musk’s Davos claim, the physics of why solar works on Earth and in space, the brutal realities of energy storage, why space-based solar changes everything, and why nuclear fusion—whenever it arrives—will be the final piece of the puzzle.
We’ll stress-test the 160km x 160km calculation, explore how SpaceX is becoming an energy infrastructure company, analyze how Tesla can capture the European and American solar markets, and figure out whether a $10 trillion Tesla—or a $15-20 trillion merged entity—is realistic or just another billionaire fever dream.
Because if Musk is right, Tesla isn’t a car company that does energy on the side. It’s an energy company that uses cars to fund the infrastructure buildout.
I’m Pierre, the co-author of Macro Notes.
To discover my other publications on business, marketing, and finance, subscribe to my personal Substack.
