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Tesla's share price soared, surpassing all traditional automakers to become the world's largest car company by market capitalization, and CEO Musk once became the third richest person in the world. With such amazing market value, even Toyota president Akio Toyoda, who rarely speaks, can't help saying a few words.

Toyota Motor, Japan's largest carmaker, has decided to raise its consolidated performance forecast for fiscal year 2020 (April 2020 to March 2021) due to a faster-than-expected recovery from the epidemic.

The company's expected sales for fiscal 2020 rose to 26 trillion yen from 24 trillion yen, and operating profit rose to 1.3 trillion yen (83.136 billion yuan) from 500 billion yen, higher than the average market expectation. Good sales in China and North America have improved performance. Toyota said: "it was expected to reach 500 billion yen for the whole fiscal year, but it has been reached in the first half of the fiscal year."

Toyota President Akio Toyoda made a rare statement about the US electric car giant Tesla, which ranks first among global automakers by market capitalization. Toyota President Akio Toyoda said that he would take practical measures to popularize environmentally friendly cars and was confident against Tesla.

Akio Toyoda used the analogy of "running a restaurant" to describe the difference between Toyota and Tesla. He pointed out that Tesla's business is a restaurant that is still promoting new recipes, while Toyota is more like a restaurant that already has a large number of customers.

"Tesla believes that their recipes will be the standard in the future, but Toyota has real kitchens and real cooks," he added. They don't make anything real, people are just buying recipes. We have kitchens and cooks, and we can make real food. "

Tesla replaced Toyota as the world's largest car company by market capitalization in July. Toyota currently has a market capitalization of $220 billion, only half of Tesla's $415 billion.

Akio Toyoda admitted that Tesla's current valuation is indeed more than the combined valuation of the seven Japanese automakers, but stressed that Toyota currently produces and sells much more cars and types of cars than Tesla. "We are losing in terms of stock price, but in terms of products, we have a complete menu for customers to choose from."

Specifically, Tesla sold about 367500 cars last year, accounting for only 3.4 per cent of Toyota's production of 10.74 million vehicles; Toyota's annual sales average is 10 million, while Tesla plans to produce 500000 electric vehicles this year. The "full menu" should refer to the company's core businesses such as internal combustion engines, pure battery electric vehicles and hybrid electric vehicles, while Tesla focuses on pure electric vehicles.

From the perspective of the current auto giants, Volkswagen Group shows how to overtake Tesla, while Toyota tries to contend with Tesla.

In January, Herbert Dis, CEO of Volkswagen Group, sent a signal to Elon Musk: we are targeting Tesla. Mr Deiss said Tesla was paving the way for electric cars, while Volkswagen was buying software companies and investing more in sustainable models and batteries. In the current market, this is a fair competition. Volkswagen can only catch up with Tesla before it can surpass it at some stage. Volkswagen Group plans to produce 1 million electric vehicles a year by 2023 to accelerate the electrification process.

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