Comment by bryanlarsen

Auto companies aren't valued as lowly as the P/E ratio indicates. Auto companies have massive amounts of debt, and debt has higher priority than equity.

Instead of "P" you should use "Enterprise Value", which is Equity + Debt - Cash. (cash subtracted to prevent double counting it).

Their EV/E ratios are much more reasonable. And Tesla's used to be only a small multiple of traditional companies, when I owned shares. Now they aren't, and I don't own shares.