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Comment by sarajevo | Hacker News Reader

Unrolled thread, complete:

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1596518142423232513.html

> In Q1 of last year, Tesla's entire profit came from selling half a billion dollars of carbon credits to other carmakers.

This alone summarizes the entire thread.

Unbelievable!

Tesla incurred tens of billions of dollars of expenses to make those cars to earn that half billion dollars.

So what?

If you sell water bottles for a $2/ea loss, and the government makes soda companies pay you $3 for each bottle of water... you don't have a good business.

Hyundai recently spent the equivalent of Tesla's quarterly revenue (not profit) just to build a new EV assembly line. They are small and insignificant in grand scheme of the auto industry.

>If you sell water bottles for a $2/ea loss, and the government makes soda companies pay you $3 for each bottle of water... you don't have a good business

Why is that not a good business? It makes profit. How is a profit making enterprise not a good business? If someone gave you that business for free would you refuse to take it? Why would anyone refuse free money?

>Hyundai recently spent the equivalent of Tesla's quarterly revenue (not profit) just to build a new EV assembly line. They are small and insignificant in grand scheme of the auto industry.

Source? All I see is that they are building a $5.5 billion EV factory, and Tesla's revenue last quarter was $21.5 billion dollars. From where are you getting your information?

>They are small and insignificant in grand scheme of the auto industry.

How are they small and insignificant when the below is true:

>Tesla reported net profit of $2.3 billion for the second quarter ended June 30, up 98% year-over-year, outperforming GM whose net profit was $1.7 billion, down 40.3%. The Austin, Texas automaker even made three times more money than Ford, which reported a net profit of $667 million, up 19% year-over-year.

The only cars that Tesla ever sold for a loss were their original Roadsters. Every other car since has been sold for significantly more than the cost of production, even if you remove the emissions credit. Tesla lost money overall in the first 10 years because they were spending furiously on R&D and facilities, but ever since their first Model S they've made significant gross profit per vehicle.

Citing Q1 raises red flags. A lot of things happen only at the beginning of the year, so it's not representative of the rest of the year. (Similarly, citing Q4 alone would also raise my eyebrows).

Results from all four quarters of last year are available. He could have used the annual result to bolster his argument - except of course the annual results debunk his argument.

Was the annual amount less than half a billion?

I'm not sure what "half a billion" refers to, but here are the annual numbers[1], which are easily accessible on their investor relations page[2] or from the SEC EDGAR system if you prefer.

Regulatory credits: $1.465 B

Total revenues: $53.823 B

GAAP profits: $5.519B

To claim that the company would be unprofitable without the credits is nonsense.

Every company does financial planning. Tesla knows they sell more regulatory credits in Q1, so they can also plan to spend more during that quarter.

1. https://tesla-cdn.thron.com/delivery/public/document/tesla/9...

2. https://ir.tesla.com

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