A big problem for Tesla isn't getting much attention
cnn.com
cnn.com
That is not what’s being discussed here. These credits are credits which allow automakers to make their fleet’s average gas mileage seem higher. Electric automakers can sell credits to gas car manufacturers which allows them to avoid penalties for not having a more fuel efficient fleet. Those penalties have been removed which means there’s no longer a reason to purchase these credits.
This is a pretty big deal for TSLA because selling these credits to other automakers is an important and consistent portion of their revenue.
The fact that these credits are going away is a really bad thing, but let’s not pretend there is any environmental benefit to buying a Tesla. Once the credits are gone there will be, but not now.
The idea that buying a Tesla doesn't do anything for the environment is just something people who buy gas cars tell themselves as they destroy our climate.
The waterbed effect is something often cited, even by environmentalists, especially economists that think they have modelled pollution and feel obligated to publish a book about it, I noticed.
To be clear, I am not saying you are either of these things, just putting some context around the concept. I fell hard for the waterbed effect but I came back from it =)
All this combined with the protectionist tariffs in place will secure big auto's desires to continue pumping out inefficient and environment destroying gas vehicles (which I posit was what they wanted to do all along) while ensuring that cheap Chinese EVs never see the light of day, customers be damned.
None of this wouldn't have happened if Elon didn't meddle with politics.
This has to be one of the biggest own-goals in American business.
> This has to be one of the biggest own-goals in American business.
All he had to do was keep pushing the environmental progress story, maybe stop overpromising FSD, and he'd still be selling tons of cars.
It's just wild to me that he would cozy up with a political party that were never going to buy his product, and in fact goes out of their way to reduce demand for his product.
All because what, he wants to be an edgelord?
It really just shows how much of a lunatic he is.
All because his son turned out to become a daughter .
Those markets will continue to become more and more electric and if the US makers want to stay competitive in those markets, they have have to go electric too.
https://lite.cnn.com/2025/07/22/business/tesla-regulatory-cr...
I always check CNN links to see if s/www/lite/ works.
A lot of things in that space (and, well, literally the rest of American society) depended upon assumptions about the regulatory and incentive structure that the legislative implementation of Project 2025 is tearing apart.
EDIT:
An example of this would be a local battery plant near me that just opened. It's currently the largest in the US. It was built with the understanding that certain subsidies would exist and that people would be buying electric vehicles. Does that factory get built without the incentives that the BBB is scrapping? Probably not.
It may be necessary to reconsider the HN rule that the title from the original article should be used.
It's Hyundai/Kia, BYD if they're ever allowed to build in the US, and if Toyota or Honda or GM ever get serious about EVs.
Because they produced them and need to sell them, and they aren't moving without the incentives - the same reason any auto-manufacturer adds incentives.
https://news.gm.com/home.detail.html/Pages/topic/us/en/2024/...
https://insideevs.com/news/764409/general-motors-ev-sales-q2...
They are still behind but approaching 50K per quarter isn't something to sneeze at.
Here are some of the incentives available to lower that:
• $7500 federal tax credit.
• $1250 if you own or lease a 2011 or later non-GM car.
• $1250 if you have a Costco Executive membership.
• $500 for being in at least one of these categories: Military, Healthcare professional, First responder, College student or recent graduate, and Educator.
Some of those categories include a lot of people.
The military one includes reservists, veterans, and retirees.
The healthcare one includes not just doctors and nurses, but also dentists, pharmacists, counselors, therapists, athletic trainers, medical and dental assistants, hospital employees, social workers, dietitians, and more.
The college one includes current college and graduate students or those two graduated from a two or four year college within the past two years.
The educator one just says you must be employed by a public school, private school, college, or university. It doesn't say it has to be a teaching job.
If you get all 4 of these discounts (tax credit, 2011+ non-GM car, Costco, and the $500) that would bring a base Equinox down to $24.5.
There are also some states that have that have EV rebates. Some of these are substantial. For example Illinois has a $4000 rebate.
Oregon has $2500 but also an additional $5000 for low income families. Low income means under 400% of the federal poverty level. That's $63k for a single person, $79k for two people, $107k for three, and $129k for four. The median household income in Oregon is $80k so I'd guess there are a lot of households that qualify for the $7500 EV rebate.
With just that an the federal tax credit that would make the base Equinox $20k in Oregon.
Even if you only get the federal tax credit that gets it do $27.5k. That's lower than most comparable ICE cars.
The base model is pretty good and that's what a lot of people buy, but it is kind of basic. Its cruise control for example is just basic cruise control: if below the set speed accelerate, if above the set speed let up on the gas but it will not brake.
Personally I consider adaptive cruise control a requirement. The cheapest Equinox with that is the base FWD model with the "active safety 2" ($545) and "comfort" ($1455) packages added (the first is the one with active cruise control but those two packages can only be bought together) which adds exactly $2000.
Heck, perhaps Tesla will be.
.. However, I think Elon has made the Tesla brand so toxic to demographics which are important to Apple, so I don't think an acquisition makes sense anymore.
Now does a lot of that change because people might not buy teslas because they dont like Elon? Maybe? Who knows.
If any of these folks bought a Tesla before 2024 they might now be somewhat conflicted about what to do about it.
But the fact remains that as far as EVs go, Tesla has the best charger network and the best cars with the longest track record, so other than the Elon/Trump stuff they probably are the best choice.
That's really debatable. It's more of a meme. If you actually check a few different brands, Tesla is not that great. I know I've got preferences against it for purely technical reasons as well.
> with the longest track record
It's long enough that you can read all about various long term issues like servicing all over the internet now.
Indisputably true, for sure.
But they drained that moat by allowing other cars to use NACS and join the Supercharger network.
It is a bad time to be an EV-only manufacturer with mass-market ambitions right now.
Consumers on average are more interested in buying hybrids from the big boys instead of pure EVs and the promised mass market cheap EV game changer is now even more removed from reality with the loss of the tax credits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_taxes_in_the_United_State...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund
(road damage is roughly proportional to the fourth power (not square root) of axle weight (and linear with axle count), so it's heavy trucks doing most of the damage to road surfaces through a compression wave that penetrates into the asphalt surface, as axles travel over)
https://hackaday.com/2025/06/26/field-guide-to-the-north-ame...
But I don't get why you'd want to both subsidize and tax. The government gets money from the tax, sure, but if they get $X from taxes and spend $Y on subsidies, couldn't they just remove the subsidies, change the tax to $X-$Y, and use the money that used to go to subsidies to fund road maintenance? If that still isn't enough, then you can increase the taxes.
To be honest, I suspect I know why it is like this. The subsidies go to oil companies, while the tax comes from citicens. So the combined effect of oil subsidies and fuel taxes is to transfer wealth from citizens to oil companies.
There are also imports to be considered. If you take the money for roads out from the production subsidies then domestic producers will be effectively paying more toward roads than foreign producers that export to the US.
Taxing gasoline to support roads does a much better job of approximating a per mile road user fee which is what would probably be the best way to do it if the overhead could be kept low.
I do wonder just how much Elon himself affects sales in the next few years. I for one have a moral obligation to make my next vehicle an EV, but I have an even greater obligation not to fund Musk.
90% of the vehicles they sell also got the $7500 credit.
They are in dire times.
For Tesla, regulatory credit sales alone have brought in $10.6 billion since 2019. There are some quarters, like earlier this year, where credit sales exceeded the company’s total net income — meaning the company would have lost money without them.
2024
Revenue $97.69B
Regulatory Credit Revenue $2.76B
Net Income $8.40B
Cash and Short-Term Investments $36.6B
How unfortunate.