New Delhi, Oct. 22 -- A potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX is increasingly being viewed on Wall Street as a question of when, rather than if. However, the prospect of combining Elon Musk's electric vehicle maker with the privately controlled space and artificial intelligence company has raised a key question: how much of a premium should Tesla shareholders receive?

According to Reuters, estimates of the premium Tesla shareholders could demand in exchange for swapping their stakes in the publicly traded automaker for shares in SpaceX range from little or nothing to as much as 35%. With Tesla valued at around $1.5 trillion, even a modest premium could add hundreds of billions of dollars to the potential transaction's value.

Musk, w...