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Further thoughts about Tesla

  


are reports now that Tesla is entering into an unlikely partnership, a plan to buy “blade batteries” from a Chinese company, BYD, for delivery in the second quarter of next year. This is a new generation of battery that may have a lot to do with the course taken by the electric-car industry.

That has nothing much to do with this.... 

In the second quarter 2021, Tesla reported more than $1 billion net income, and earnings per share of $1.45, which beat analyst expectations of just $0.98. Tesla’s overall automotive revenue for the quarter was $10.21 billion. 

Critics have sometimes knocked Tesla for relying too much on the sale of regulatory credits as a source of revenue. A regulatory system in California, like analogous systems in Europe, give credits to automakers depending on how many EVs they manufacture. Those who don’t manufacture a sufficient number of EVs to keep the regulators happy can avoid penalties by buying credits from those who manufacture more than enough. Since Tesla manufactures only EVs, it gets a lot of credits, and their sale is a nice sideline.    

But reporting a lot of income from those sales relative to one’s overall numbers makes for grouchy analysts, who would rather see revenue from the actual sale of one’s product.  

That is why it is important that, of Tesla’s $10.21 billion in revenue in 2Q, only $354 million of that (about 3.5%) came from the sales of regulatory credits. 

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