Tesla admits market cap is supercharged Electric car manufacturer Tesla has a higher market capitalisation than it "deserves," its chief executive said. Tesla, which expects to sell just 21,000 cars this year, is worth about $22bn, roughly half the value of Ford and a third of the value of General Motors, which sold more than 9m vehicles last year. The California-based company, which counts Hollywood stars such as Cameron Diaz as customers, has seen its stock price rise about 400 per cent so far in 2013. "I think that we have quite a high valuation, and a higher valuation than we have any right to deserve," chief executive Elon Musk said at an event to mark the opening of a new Tesla showroom in London. The carmaker, whose rise in California's luxury market has raised eyebrows at global carmakers that have invested in electric vehicles such as Toyota and Nissan, has said it wants to bring a mass-market version of its cars to the market within three years. Tesla, whose futuristic designs and Californian roots have drawn many to compare it with Apple, on Thursday announced it had hired a former executive at the electronics company to head development of its new vehicles. Doug Field, who began his career at Ford, was charged with developing products such as the MacBook Air, MacBook Pro and iMac at Apple, Tesla said. Tesla's flagship Model S, a sleek sedan, has quickly become an environmentally friendly status symbol in San Francisco and starts from $62,400 inclusive of a $7,500 federal tax credit offered on all new electric cars in the US. The carmaker reported its first quarterly profit in May after going public in 2010, seven years after it was founded. Its meteoric rise in value has been cheered by green energy campaigners, but some market analysts have questioned whether the stock is overvalued. The company would work to justify its interest from investors, Mr Musk said on Thursday, and would work to ultimately command a higher value than it does today.