(Reuters) -The Financial Times newspaper has followed the Time magazine in naming Elon Musk, the chief of Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) Inc, as its "person of the year", commending him for the work done in transforming the electric vehicle industry.
Tesla, the global EV leader, has pushed many young consumers and legacy automakers to shift focus to electric vehicles.
In a column, the FT's editor, Roula Khalaf, credited Musk for demonstrating that EVs could replace cars fueled by gasoline, and called him a revolutionary in the industry.
"For a long time, the rest of the auto industry was basically calling Tesla and me fools and frauds," the newspaper quoted Musk as saying in an interview.
"They were saying electric cars wouldn't work, you can't achieve the range and performance. And even if you did that, nobody would buy them."
Musk is the world's richest person and his company Tesla is worth about $1 trillion, making it more valuable than automakers Ford Motor (NYSE:F) and General Motors (NYSE:GM) combined. Over the last few weeks, Musk has sold nearly $13 billion worth of Tesla shares.
U.S. Senate Democrats have demanded that stocks and tradeable assets of billionaires be taxed as majority of their wealth lies there.
Earlier this week, Democratic U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren took to Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) to say that Musk should pay taxes and stop "freeloading off everyone else" after Time magazine named him its "person of the year". https://
"And if you opened your eyes for 2 seconds, you would realize I will pay more taxes than any American in history this year," Musk responded.
From hosting NBC sketch comedy show "Saturday Night Live" to dropping tweets on cryptocurrencies and meme stocks that have triggered massive movements in their value, Musk has dominated the headlines and amassed over 66 million followers on Twitter.