[adamlangsner]

You’re missing costs in this equation. Without the sale of the credits they would not have been able to post a profit for the quarter. They may have had $31.5B in revenue but the cost of that revenue was greater.

If I sold a $1 can of coke for $0.70. I can report $0.70 of revenue but i still lost $0.30 on the transaction.

[xyzzy123]

Related thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25981497

The consensus over there seems to be that they have decent unit economics and the impact of subsidy removal is that they'd probably have to convince the market to accept negative net income, or grow slower.

I̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶s̶e̶n̶s̶i̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶v̶e̶s̶t̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶a̶n̶t̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶g̶r̶o̶w̶ ̶s̶l̶o̶w̶e̶r̶.

G̶o̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶a̶c̶k̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶r̶ ̶a̶n̶a̶l̶o̶g̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶e̶l̶l̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶o̶k̶e̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶$̶1̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶c̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶$̶.̶8̶5̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶a̶k̶e̶.̶.̶.̶ ̶b̶u̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶g̶e̶t̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶u̶b̶s̶i̶d̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶b̶a̶r̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶b̶r̶e̶a̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶e̶v̶e̶n̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶y̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶s̶p̶e̶n̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶s̶o̶ ̶m̶u̶c̶h̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶n̶e̶w̶ ̶c̶o̶l̶a̶ ̶f̶a̶c̶t̶o̶r̶i̶e̶s̶.̶

[itsoktocry]

Here we go again: building factories does not come off the income line. They are selling cars at a loss. Whether they manage to change that with increased scale is yet to be seen, but they are selling more cars and making less money.

[njarboe]

Tesla has many avenues of action available to them and many goals. One goal recently, I think, was to get 4 quarters of profitability to get listed on the S&P 500, among other reasons. These credits exist, so they factored that in to what they needed to do to show a profit. If they did not exist then Tesla (Elon Musk) could have altered what they were doing some to get to profitability. Maybe get there a quarter later, push up short term production trading off R&D, etc. I am not a CEO but this is what they do.