Jim Cramer has crowed Tesla founder and CEO Elon Musk as the future King of California.
Cramer, speaking Thursday on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street,” made the proclamation in light of the Golden State’s pending ban in 2035 on gas-powered vehicles — and the electric car company’s streak of dominance.
“It’s going to be a state of Teslas unless Jim Farley can get that F-150 Lighting out,” Cramer said, referring to Ford’s CEO, in the segment you can watch at the top of this post. “He thinks he can do 600,000 run rate by the end of next year.”
But Cramer then reverted back to the main point, perhaps given the fact parking a large pick-up truck is no easy task in many parts of California.
“This guy is going to own California given this new initiative,” Cramer said of Musk.
The Cramer-led CNBC conversation came during a segment about Tesla’s stock performance after a video hit of billionaire investor Ron Baron predicting Tesla would become the biggest company in the world in 10 years — before another decade after which, Baron said, fellow Musk company SpaceX would become the biggest company in the world.
“The bears are trying so hard to keep their price targets down, but they can’t help it,” Cramer said of the market forces on Tesla stock, which was down 1% over the past five days but up 10% over the past month. “There was a piece this morning about the factory in Berlin, how it’s the most amazing factory in the world. You keep reading positive, positives. And at the same time California is voting right now to be able to put, in 2035, every vehicle has to be EV.”
On Thursday, the California Air Resources Board was set to vote on an initiative that would ban all gas-powered vehicles in the state starting in 2035, a move first proffered by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2020. The law would implement funding to have 250,000 electric car charging stations installed in the state by 2025. The initiative would need federal approval if passed by the state board, which was expected.
Tesla’s market value stood in sixth place globally Thursday at $920 billion, a far cry from Apple’s world-leading market cap of $2.71 trillion. Between Tesla and Apple stood Amazon ($1.38 trillion), Alphabet/Google ($1.51 trillion), Microsoft ($2.06 trillion) and oil giant Saudi Aramco ($2.31 trillion).
“When he used to say things like that five years ago, I would kind of laugh at him,” CNBC’s David Faber said of Baron. “Now you can’t.”
“There isn’t anything about him given to hyperbole,” Cramer added.
