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Comment by JohnTHaller | Hacker News Reader

Must take delivery between now and Dec 31. Likely to make up for a poor quarter and the continuing drops in stock price.

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No, it's to make up for NOT getting the $7,500 federal tax credit you get starting Jan 1st. Poor quarter? Tesla is setting records and outselling ICE cars.

> outselling ICE cars

Pardon me for asking, but what does this mean?

Internal combustion engine

I mean, what does it mean for them to be outselling ICE cars? What metric are we using?

Number of cars sold. As far as profit, they're making several times the money per vehicle sold compared to companies like Toyota.

People keep saying this, but it makes no sense. It is only considering the buyer's motivation, not the seller's. Why would Tesla prefer to sell a car now for $7.5k less than they'll supposedly get in one week?

If they really believe they can sell the car without a discount in a week, it's basically like a loan with 10%/week interest rate. That can't make sense. So either they don't believe they can sell that car for the full price in a weekend, or they are desperate to juice their Q4 numbers.

Alternative explanation could be they need to keep inventory levels low. In other words, not selling now could be also a logistics issue.

Also like most large manufacturers, Tesla typically pays the subcontractors etc. only after the car is delivered, getting an effectively interest free loan.

But perhaps it's just about meeting Q4 goals.

It's never been about profit. Tesla has a goal of electrifying the car market. Elon has stated he would consider making the rest of the industry switch to making EVs a success. Elon has his goals that he very reliably sticks to (Ignore the entertainment "news" companies that lie non stop). Tesla raised the price of their vehicles over and over again to stabilize demand, they didn't want 2 year wait times. Elon has stated he's not happy with how much the cars cost right now.

If they don’t care about profit why do they change for additional features where the hardware already exists and things like Autopilot where demand is not a concern?

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