Tesla sees first ever quarterly profit

Punx0r said:

How does making an observation about Tesla's profitability make someone a troll and guilty of ignoring reality?

Clearly, Tesla's current car sales volume doesn't quite cover its overheads. Selling carbon credits tips the balance.

Saying they have a 25% margin on direct costs for producing a car doesn't mean much on it's own. They could make a car for $1000, sell it for $1m and have a huge margin, but if you only sell one a year and your marketing budget is $2m, you lose.

Tesla has achieved some impressive things and it will be very interesting to see where the company goes in the future. However, blind adoration and praise because its objectives seem to fit your personal beliefs isn't a good idea. That's how people ended up in Jonestown.

BTW, Aston Martin didn't turn a profit for decades.

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He/she isn't saying the company is running a loss which is true when you remove the credits. If they had said the company was running a loss or wasn't profitable without credits I would have no problem with that. But that's not what was said. She/He is saying the cars themselves aren't profitable. That is trolling.

My point is Tesla makes unprofitable cars that it subsidizes by selling the carbon/pollution credits to companies that make affordable cars.

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Tesla are putting huge amounts of money on capital expenditure which is always a wise course of action when you are a growing company. They are certainly not burrowing for day-to-day expenses.

I don't have blind adoration for Tesla and Elon Musk. They still could conceivably fail. If they do the most likely cause would be a global financial shock - which is a strong possibility. I believe that they will succeed as they have a far superior product and a massive competitive advantage over all the other car manufacturers when it comes to the most important constituent part - the battery.