Tesla zooms past $1t market cap

Tesla Inc surpassed $1 trillion in market value on Monday after landing its biggest-ever order from rental car company Hertz, a deal that reinforced the electric car leader's ambitions to top the entire auto industry in sales over the next decade.

Tesla shares surged as much as 14.9 per cent to $1,045.02, making it the world's most valuable automaker according to Reuters calculations based on its latest filing.

Even Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk expressed surprise at the velocity of the surge.

 "Strange that moved valuation, as Tesla is very much a production ramp problem, not a demand problem," Musk tweeted in reply to a comment by Ross Gerber, co-founder of the investment fund Gerber Kawasaki and a Tesla shareholder.

"Wild $T1mes!" Musk wrote in a separate tweet.

Tesla is the first carmaker to join the elite club of trillion-dollar companies that includes Apple Inc, Amazon.com Inc, Microsoft Corp and Alphabet Inc.

Most automakers do not boast about sales to rental car companies, often made at discounts to unload slow-selling models.

But for Tesla and its investors, Hertz's decision to order 100,000 Tesla vehicles by the end of 2022 showed electric vehicles are no longer a niche product, but will dominate the mass car market in the near future.