Tesla Inc Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk has been named the Financial Times newspaper's "Person of the Year", two days after getting a similar recognition from the Time magazine.

The FT said it picked Musk for triggering a historic shift in the world's auto industry towards electric vehicles.

"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."

  - Reuters