To celebrate Tesla’s US$788 billion market cap in comparison to BYD’s $93 billion is to confuse incentives with outcomes. Both companies receive generous tax breaks and other government goodies. That Tesla is far more profitable than BYD while EVs have far less market penetration in the US is evidence of policy failure, not Elon Musk’s brilliance. Tesla pocketed the incentives while BYD (and competitors) delivered outcomes.

What we want from the butcher, the brewer and the baker are beef, beer and bread, not for them to be fabulously wealthy shop owners. What China wants from BYD and Jinko Solar (and the US from Tesla and First Solar) should be affordable EVs and solar panels, not trillion-dollar market-cap stocks. In fact, mega-cap valuations indicate that something has gone seriously awry. Do we really want tech billionaires or do we really want tech?