People love hearing stories - and Evergrande chairman Xu Jiayin certainly thinks he has an appealing story to tell. And it's a script that has already electrified the market.

His narrative that Evergrande Health - better known as Evergrande Auto - would catch up with and pass Tesla to become the world's biggest new-energy automaker in several years may be a dream, but it's definitely ambitious enough to grab investors' eyeballs.

Spending big on TV and print ads, Xu was telling investors to take his new-energy-vehicle baby seriously. Obviously, they did.

Since mid-June - about two months before Evergrande's Hengchi 1 to Hengchi 6 prototypes were revealed to the media - the share price of Evergrande Health began picking up momentum at an accelerating pace.

In less than two months, its share price roared to a record high of HK$37.05 last week from just above HK$6 in the first half of June. It's absolutely stunning.

If share price performance were the only yardstick in determining a winner, it would have been true to say Xu is trying hard to keep up with Elon Musk, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Tesla.

It seems that entrepreneurs tend to have a common trait of thinking big.

Musk is known to be a big dreamer. Nobody really took him seriously when he vowed to bring a revolution to the auto-making industry with vehicles powered by battery instead of fossil fuels.

He had to overcome a huge hurdle in battery technology so that his cars could travel an acceptable distance after every charge.

Even today, Tesla offers only a limited range of models - the 3, S, X and Y.

Tesla has never the biggest in terms of the number of vehicles sold. Toyota sold many times more in 2019. But Tesla offers more imagination than Toyota.

The successful mission to deliver two astronauts to the International Space Station on a SpaceX rocket has lifted Tesla to be more than just an electric-car maker.

Don't forget it has taken Musk many years to reach where he is today.

Xu has a big dream too. Thanks to new-energy development over the years, Xu's Hengchi project did not have to start from scratch. Battery technology is now advanced and the industry is even exploring the viability to power vehicles with hydrogen extracted from water.

So, from the perspective of technology, Xu was near the destination when he unveiled the Hengchi concept cars.

However, it is also exactly for the same reason that it is too soon to say the Hengchi cars will instantly become a category killer. There are already many choices in the market, not only from Tesla but also powerful competitors like Toyota.

If engineering is not a concern for Xu, he still has to check a long list of boxes before he can claim success - from mass production and quality assurance to marketing, pricing and sales.

Xu's auto division is now bigger than the mainland's leading carmaker Geely in terms of market capitalization. The tycoon dreams big - and time will tell if he will be China's Elon Musk.

Uphill battle to overtake Musk