EVs?.... doesnt make sense., page-609

@cdt...."Tell us all, has Tesla achieved nothing or plenty over the past twelve years?

Well. not yet a profit.

Quote from AutoEvolution. But there are many other similar articles.

Well, guess what? It's 2021, and Tesla still isn't making a profit by selling EVs.

Wait a minute,Teslahas just declared a $721 profit for 2020, so what are we on about? It may sound weird, but both statements are true: Tesla did have a record year delivering just short of 500,000 cars and finishing with a substantial positive net income, and yet, if its income relied strictly on the cars it sold, the year would have ended with a negative balance.

The difference came, ironically enough, from the coffers of various legacy car manufacturers. There are currently eleven states (California, Colorado, Connecticut, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Vermont) that require automakers to sell a certain percentage of zero-emission vehicles.

Fail to do that, and they can buy regulatory credits from other manufacturers who exceed their quote. Since Tesla only makes EVs, it obviously has plenty of those credits to go around for anyone willing to come up with the money, and since it's the law, they kind of have to.

According toCNN Business, this tactic has earned the Palo Alto carmaker $3.3 billion over the past five years, with the bulk of it ($1.6 billion) coming in 2020. If you do the math, you'll see that even with 500,000 vehicles sold, Tesla would have still registered a loss of over $800 million if it weren't for the money paid by the companies that are slower to react to the changes in the market.

The question now is whether this is a sustainable business plan for Tesla in the medium to long run. With more and more signs of manufacturers finally making serious efforts on theEVfront, the 2020 situation looks increasingly less likely to repeat.


Regards....Marum.