Here's your Forbes Daily Briefing for Monday, March 24th. Today on Forbes, five people who could

run Tesla better than Elon Musk. Elon Musk runs six companies, each valued in excess of

$1 billion, and since January has also spearheaded Doge, President Trump's efforts to radically downsize

the federal government. How does he have time for it all? The short answer is he doesn't. At some of

his companies, he is loyal and competent lieutenants, like SpaceX's president and C.O. Gwynne Shotwell,

running things day to day. But that's not true at Tesla, the publicly traded

EV maker with a market cap of $770 billion. It's highly unlikely, but if the world's wealthiest

person were to suddenly decide to step back from his CEO role at the EV maker, there's no

obvious successor to lead the company at this

tricky juncture. When sales are falling, its EV Tech Edge is threatened by Chinese

competitors like BYD, and it trails Waymo in the emerging Robotaxi business. If he did step

down, it would trigger an even bigger sell-off of Tesla shares than the 50% slide that's occurred

in recent months.

Much of the company's value, far larger than any other carmakers, and 118 times its earnings,

is tied to Musk's persona as a business visionary.

Dan Ives, a bullish Tesla analyst for Wedbush, told Forbes, quote,

Musk is Tesla and Tesla is Musk. Anyone else would change the whole story.

Big public companies typically have a deep bench of in-house CEO candidates waiting in the wings,

managers who've proven they're up for the job and who investors and analysts are familiar with.

That's not the case that Tesla, which Musk has so profoundly dominated in his 17 years as CEO and top shareholder since he bought into it. In fact, it has no president, C.O or EVP.

And aside from its CFO, the highest ranking executive below Musk is a single senior

vice president. The successor pool is far, far smaller than at any other large auto manufacturing

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