Ahh yes, Tesla makes a profit. Technically. Five quarters in a row, now. I said they sold their cars at a loss, which they do.  Back in July Tesla hit the milestone of four quarters of consecutive profit, which allowed it to join the S&P 500. But Tesla cannot post a profit from the sales of its cars. If Tesla just made money selling cars, Tesla would be routinely losing money.  

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Tesla is only profitable because it sells hundreds of millions of dollars of artificial regulatory clean air credits to other carmakers. Tesla cars get sold at a loss. Tesla turns that around by selling totally artificial bullshit green financial derivatives.  June quarter of 2020 (that’s the fourth consecutive profit one, which allowed it to join the S&P): Tesla made US$428-million selling bullshit regulatory credits. That’s about four times the $104 million in net profit they declared that quarter. In other words, without selling these fake clean air credits to other carmakers, they would have been roughly $300 million in the red.   And that’s a typical recent result for them.  These bullshit regulatory credits are the most high performance financial product Tesla sells. And it works like this: In California, and at least 13 other US states (so, roughly a quarter of the union) carmakers which want to sell cars into those states must sell a certain number of notionally ‘green’ vehicles - EVs, hybrids, like that. Or they face big fines. If they sell more notionally zero emission vehicles than their quota, they get these fake credits.  And the only way to sidestep the fines for failing to sell sufficient green vehicles is to buy bullshit zero-emission vehicle credits from a carmaker which is exceeding its quotas for ZEVs. Since Tesla sells only EVs, it’s got fake credits to burn, so it sells them to carmakers that need them, for less than the fines they would otherwise pay. Kerr-friggin’ ching. There’s the Tesla profit centre. It’s completely artificial.  Selling these credits to other carmakers is the only reason Tesla is profitable, five quarters in a row. And demand for those credits will increase in 2021, until major competition steps in. Without the revenue from the sale of bullshit enviro-credits, Tesla remains wholly unprofitable. Ergo, Tesla cars get sold at a loss. This is very basic.