Comment on Elon Musk demands another huge payday from Tesla

• No1@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Every time I leave my house, I see dozens of Teslas driving around. If they’re not profitable, then they’re horrifically bad at making money. They’re ubiquitous. Pretty impressive market penetration for a business run by people who don’t know what they’re doing.

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  • Voroxpete@sh.itjust.works ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Their single biggest revenue stream is selling carbon credits. They’re basically a regulatory arbitrage business with a side hustle in cars.

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    • LilB0kChoy@midwest.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Just like Amazon who is a cloud computing company with a side hustle in e-tail or Google which is an ad company with a side hustle in tech.

      In general most people don’t really understand this about big companies.

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      • guacupado@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Yeah but in their cases the “hustle” got them the funds to move into their current space. Musk just had so much money that Tesla outlasted all the red it was in. Same thing going on with Twitter.

        We all know it’ll never fully go under, he has too much money for it too. It’ll last long enough to sooner or later come back up.

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  • Hypx@kbin.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Enron was a huge business that had millions of customers. It just happened to lose money while doing so. The crime was that they hid that last part.

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    • homesweethomeMrL@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Also they deliberately turned off people’s power for more money. Like, scum-of-the-earth.

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  • Riven@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Might be area dependant. Lots of them where I work at not many at all where I live at about an hour away.

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• partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  and no one can explain how it is actually profitable.

  Hang on a sec, its publicly trade company. Its pretty easy to see how its profitable especially compared to other legacy automakers.

  Tesla vs Ford numbers:

  On the other hand, “let’s look at Tesla and the Model 3. Tesla is aiming for 25% gross margin on the Model 3 and mid-teens profit margin (let’s say 14%). The average price of the Model 3 is projected at around $42,000… [so] the average gross margin on a Model 3 would be $10,500 and profit margin would be $5,880. Compared to Ford’s average vehicle profit margin of $1,100, the Model 3 would be 5x as profitable.” source

  Disclaimer: the source is from March of 2023 and Tesla has cut prices (which means less profit) since then, but they had a lot of room to do so with so much profit per car.

  So one could say that Tesla has been able to charge a premium for a cheaper car, or they’ve been able to reduce manufacturing cost for a moderately priced car. Both result in high margin returns for the company.

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  • Hypx@kbin.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They have a direct sales model which is more expensive to operate and exaggerates profit margin. There’s also reason to believe they are wildly understating warranty costs plus ignoring R&D costs. People who look closely have consistently concluded that Tesla cannot really be making money, or have very narrow profit margins at best.

    Huge price cuts will compound these problems dramatically.

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    • partial_accumen@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      They have a direct sales model which is more expensive to operate and exaggerates profit margin.

      How would adding a middleman that also has to make profit make the company earn less? Wouldn’t direct sales allow Tesla to sell for a higher price because they can sell at retail instead of a “wholesale” cost normally sold to a dealership?

      People who look closely have consistently concluded that Tesla cannot really be making money, or have very narrow profit margins at best.

      I’d be interested in reading more on this assertion. Do you have a source you can point me to?

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      • Hypx@kbin.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        You have to build the entire system out yourself. That costs a lot of money. The dealership model also costs the manufacturer basically zero dollars, because it really profits on used car sales and maintenance works. You don't make anymore money by having your own dealerships. The whole argument that there's some secret behind Tesla's business smacks of gaslighting, not something that actually holds up to reason.

        It's been a long standing issue with Tesla's accounting. No one can really explain how profits are actually being generated, especially considering everyone in the West is losing money on EVs. It's also being ran entirely by sycophants and people with minimal qualifications, with zero accountability anywhere. So it just seems, via Occam's razor, that they're cooking the books.

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      • rsuri@lemmy.world ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Not OP but regarding sources, there’s a community referred to as “TSLAQ” (Q referring to a letter typically added to bankrupt stock symbols) that’s been critical of TSLA’s accounting practices. See: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Tesla,_Inc.#Ac…

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• fosforus@sopuli.xyz ⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Their Q4 2023 results will be called in on 24th this month, so we’ll see soon. They were still making profit in Q3, even if dwindling.

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