Tesla stock gained nearly 2,000% since its IPO eight years ago [Video]

Birthday wishes are in order for Elon Musk. But there's another milestone the CEO should be proud of — Tesla's stock just had its birthday too. According to CNBC, "Shares of Elon Musk's Tesla are up nearly 2,000 percent from the company's $17 per share initial public offering, which was held eight years ago on June 29, 2010."

Above: Tesla's Model S (Image: Tesla)

For investors, "Tesla CEO Elon Musk has made the electric car maker’s shareholders a lot of money... Investors are betting that Musk’s company will disrupt the entire auto industry and gain significant market share as the world moves toward electric cars." To put the Tesla [NASDAQ: TSLA] growth story into perspective, "Only four stocks in the entire S&P 500 have outperformed Tesla since its IPO."

Above: These four S&P 500 stocks are the only companies who've outperformed Tesla since its IPO (Source: CNBC)

“People at this point ought to be a little more optimistic about the future of Tesla because we’ve confounded the critics at every turn,” Musk told CNBC after Tesla went public at $17 a share. “At a certain point, people have to get tired of being wrong.” Eight years later, Tesla's market value sits at $58.7 billion after trading at around $347 a share on the anniversary of its IPO.

Above: CNBC's Phil LeBeau takes a look back on the past eight years of Tesla's growth (Youtube: CNBC)

Jamie Albertine, an auto analyst for Consumer Edge Research says, "What they’ve been able to do in the last eight years is what makes Tesla a powerful innovator." And Tesla can now boast another feather in their cap — it's reported (via RenewEconomy), "Tesla and its battery cell provider Panasonic have taken the number one ranking in the latest Bloomberg New Energy Finance tally of tier 1 lithium-ion battery cell makers."

Above: Panasonic/Tesla top the list of tier 1 lithium-ion battery cell makers in the world by volume (Source: Bloomberg New Energy Finance via RenewEconomy)

But it's not just the sheer volume of batteries Tesla produces that differentiates it — it's also the company's industry-leading battery tech. One example cited by German investment bank Berenberg (via Markets Insider): "Improvements made to the already industry-leading thermal management system in the Model S/X... [including] the new aluminum cooling radiators that surround each individual cell in the Model 3 pack."

Above: Design rendering of a Tesla Model 3 (Image: dragosburian / cgtrader)

Berenberg's analyst Alexander Haissl explains, "This technology, which helps to minimise battery degradation and reduce charging times, is a remarkable piece of system engineering that has been largely completely overlooked as a key competitive advantage for Tesla compared to other OEMs offering more primitive solutions.” It's no wonder Germany's legacy automakers were spooked after their engineers secretly tore down a Tesla Model 3.

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Sources: CNBC, RenewEconomy, Markets Insider