You cannot become rich (paper first, then actually rich) with debt, you have to pump the stock so when you sell onto bigger fools you do so from a much higher price point.<p>Also intuitively for many people debt=problems as far as their individual and domestic life is concerned, so they see 200B debt and think "problems within the company" whereas in reality the company without debt might have much more criticalities (like in this case) but they are hidden and not visible on a financial spreadsheet (eg. lack of moat, heavily political product, brand goodwill daily destroyed by CEO etc)<p>Also the age old saying of finance comes to mind "When you have a 200k debt you have a problem, when you have a 200B debt, the bank has a problem"<p>Toyota is vitally important to the world's economy, if it disappeared overnight the Quality of Life of the global population would be reduced.<p>Whereas if Tesla were to disappear overnight nothing would fundamentally change, like when SVB, FTX or Theranos disappeared overnight, the drama was within the media and in the hearts of the "true believers", AKA the fools who saw those companies (and see Tesla) as a bastion of hope, optimisim, idealism and all that religious BS which have nothing to do with the consumption of products to improve one's life.<p>To put it in financial terms Toyota has graduated to country status, whereas Tesla is still a financial engineering scheme to enrich the owner.