Jay Leno Sounds Off On Why He Thinks Tesla Is The Most Valuable Car Company In The World

As Tesla’s (TSLA) market cap hit $1 trillion on Monday, car enthusiast and former “The Tonight Show” host Jay Leno gave his thoughts on why the company is the most valuable automaker in the world.

Leno told CNBC that he thinks that Elon Musk is responsible for the success of Tesla, which has netted the CEO a fortune worth nearly $300 billion after Hertz announced that it would be ordering 100,000 EVs from the electric carmaker for its rental car fleet.

Leno, who owns a Tesla, told the news outlet that he sees Musk as a visionary like Henry Ford and Thomas Edison, who push innovation “because they own the whole deal.”

Musk owns more than 20% of Tesla.

“When you own the company, you can do whatever you want,” Leno told CNBC. “Some people love it, and some people hate it, but that’s why all other cars look alike. Because everything else has to be designed by committee.”

Leno gave the example of Tesla’s Plaid, saying, “Can you imagine any of the major automobile manufacturers saying, ‘Let’s call this high-performance feature Plaid, like they did in Spaceballs, as a joke?‘

“You’d be fired or thrown out of the office. But when you own the company. Well, my car says ‘Plaid’ on the back of it.”

In the 1987 movie “Spaceballs,” a spacecraft accelerates in speed ranging from light to ridiculous to ludicrous to plaid, with plaid being the fastest. Plaid is Tesla’s high-performance electric vehicle.

Musk, who is notoriously outspoken, especially on Twitter, has influenced Tesla’s vehicles from a design standpoint.

From the Model S Plaid Yoke-style steering wheel to the angular appearance of the Cybertruck, Musk’s vision works to help Tesla stand out from its rivals, which Leno told CNBC is “because it’s one person’s idea of what it should be.”

As of Thursday at 1:27 p.m. ET, shares of Tesla were trading at $1,073.50, up $35.64, or 3.43%.