[new_realist]

Tesla has spent $20B so far. All of that money created a burst of carbon emissions which they haven’t yet offset though EV sales: especially since they sell pollution credits to other manufacturers. They’re still deeply in the hole.

[CydeWeys]

I'm not following this logic. That $20B created a million vehicles (and counting) that release much less pollution over their lifetime than $20B spent making ICE vehicles.

[tonyedgecombe]

Presumably they mean Tesla have spent $20B on laying cement for new factories, filling them with robots, buying computers, building paint shops, flying managers to China, etc. All that activity has an environmental impact.

It's a reasonable point, our economy is energy based and so the more you spend the bigger the environmental impact. We are trying to decouple it but we have a long way to go yet.

[cjhopman]

I don't think you understand. The $20B isn't the cost to make the cars, it's how much they've lost doing it. There's nobody in the world that is losing $20B making ICE vehicles, and even big daddy elon might have trouble convincing investors to blow that money on such a traditional product.

[CydeWeys]

What? How have they "lost" $20B? They may currently be carrying that much debt, but plenty of other auto manufacturers are carrying significantly more debt than that (e.g. $155B for Ford). Debts that you invest into growing a business faster aren't lost money. Tesla makes money on every car sold. It made sense for them to take out debt to enable that scaling.

And what does this have to do with whether their products are good for the environment anyway? Whether it makes sense to take on debt to establish a new business seems completely orthogonal.

[bananabreakfast]

Yeah and so is every other company on earth. At least they're doing something about it.