t was little over a month ago that the Standard confidently predicted Elon Musk would not stay the second richest person in the world for long. And how right we were.

Back in November, the Tesla founder was worth a mere $130billion, or around £100billion. Today, after a 7.9% jolt to his company’s share price, he overtook Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to clock a $194.8billion (£143billion) fortune.  

It means that in the past year, while much of the rest of the world was bedevilled by the pandemic, the 49-year-old South African-born engineer’s personal fortune has ramped up by $165 billion, in the fastest bout of personal wealth creation in history.  

The rise has been fueled by the extraordinary rally in Tesla’s share price which has rocketed 743% in a year on the back of consistent profits, inclusion in the S&P 500 Index and enthusiasm from Wall Street and 

The shares - of which he holds 20% - have gained more than 23,900% since its 2010 initial public offering, according to analysis by Bloomberg, and Tesla’s market value of $774 billion now stands $10 billion above Facebook’s.

This comes despite the fact that Tesla produced just over half-a-million cars last year - a fraction of the output of Ford and General Motors and has led critics to constantly caution that the bubble is about to burst.  

They insist Tesla shares are absurdly overvalued, resting on a belief system rather than an understanding of the industry: it is now worth more than Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai, GM and Ford combined.