How the Stock Market just Injected Formula E with a Bright Future

Tesla is now worth more than Ford. An electric car company that has only built two models has surpassed the worth of the oldest mass-scale car manufacturer in the world. Why has this happened? Because the money follows exponential trends and safe bets.

There is an ongoing debate surrounding “peak oil” – The point in time in which oil reserves were being extracted from the Earth at an all time maximum. Commercially, Peak oil happened in 2009, meaning that for the past eight years, we have been extracting less and less oil from the ground. There are untapped reserves that could redefine the point of “peak oil”, but these are reserves that we can’t feasibly get to, and may cause irreversible, unexpected consequences – there’s also the fact that these reserves will one day deplete too, only after prices have gradually soared.

We’re at a crossroads in human history where the political arena of Global Warming detracts from the scientific discussion. It’s a bleak setting when Global Warming has a greater value as a political football than it does as a serious discussion, but a non-emotive system that evidences the way the world is changing is the stock market, and Tesla is now worth more than Ford.

That’s the car company, not the scientist Nikola Tesla who suspiciously died in a New York hotel room after drawing up implications that free, infinite electrical energy could be a reality. It’s no irony that the manufacturer is named after the famous scientist who pioneered wireless power and understood the use of x-rays before their time. He was a revolutionary in the same sense that electric-powered car manufacturers have made the first domino fall on the monopoly of traditional car manufacturers who have already started to ride the wave of electric power themselves.

Motorsport has a habit of being a prototyping platform for the wider automotive industry, and the steady rise of Formula E, despite initial criticism from the petrolhead (who could be repackaged as the volthead at some point in the not too distant future), indicates an automotive industry and general manufacturing beyond, that is beginning to lean towards employing electric-power –  because the reality of the planet’s landscape of resource has changed.

In the 50’s at a time when Ford were the biggest manufacturer of automobiles, we lived in a world of infinite resources, and this notion was at the base of our societal model. Now, it’s a different picture, and the fact that Tesla is now worth more than Ford on the stock market cements a huge shift in perspective, one that bodes very well for electric Motorsport like Formula E, a series that’s technological developments has the scope to transcend the race-track and become viable in a quickly changing world. Tesla have a bit of dollar now, so surely it’s time for them to start racing in Formula E too.