But in the case of a car company owning a bank, neither market cap or EV are good answers for comparison. The first lets debt cloud the intrinsic value of the m

But in the case of a car company owning a bank, neither market cap or EV are good answers for comparison. The first lets debt cloud the intrinsic value of the manufacturing operation, and the second dumps the value of six months worth of production onto the calculation for no real reason. VW has 133 billion euros of receivables for its leases. If we talk about Tesla's worth in comparison to VW by comparing EV, we're essentially discarding that line item - worth double the market cap of GM. And as I said above, if Tesla buys this $0 market cap $800bn EV bank, why should it change the relative value of the car companies to each other? Using your method, it does. To put it another way, when Tesla took on $500m in debt to offer Model 3 leases - did the business really change in any material way? If they financed $10bn 3/Y leases this year - would the value of the company bump up by 1% compared to if they used a leasing partner?