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The success of these EVs may actually impact Tesla profitability: if Spark and LEAF sales take off in California, it means less of a market for the ZEV credits
by codex 13y ago
The success of these EVs may actually impact Tesla profitability: if Spark and LEAF sales take off in California, it means less of a market for the ZEV credits that Tesla sells. However, I doubt any mainstream manufacturer will have surplus ZEV credits to sell, like Tesla does--they'd have to sell more than 13% of their cars as electrics. Currently Nissan's sells only 2% of its cars as electric, worldwide.
- NickM 13y agoTesla are already profitable without selling ZEV credits though, and they're are expecting that source of income to phase out over the next few quarters anyway. It might hurt them a tiny bit, but it shouldn't have much of an impact in the long term.
- codex 13y agoI don't think that's true. Tesla took in $68M from ZEV last quarter but only made $11M in profits--thus, 600% of their profits came from ZEV. This is a bit of a hand wave, though, because if you know you have ZEV income coming in the door, you might spend more on future R&D than if you didn't.
- NickM 13y agoYour $68M number on the ZEV credits is correct, but I checked the financial results and they actually made $96.3M in profit for Q1 2013.
- codex 13y agoNot according to Google: https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATSLA&fstype=ii&ei=L5qeUcjZBM_LiQKphAE https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ATSLA&fstype=ii... Oh, you're looking at gross profit, which excludes sales, G&A, R&D, etc. Yes, on that basis Tesla is profitable even without ZEVs.