Tesla's dirty little secret: Its net profit doesn't come from selling cars

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.̶

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.