| GM (and all other auto manufacturers) include their R&D expense in their COGS since they acknowledge they must release new models every year. Tesla, doesn't. Tesla also doesn't include showroom costs in their COGS, but they can't sell cars without them.. (all other autos only include the revenue they receive from their dealer networks as the top-line revenue figure). These are the kinds of thing that makes people suspicious about their ultimate financials. https://seekingalpha.com/article/2783335-how-teslas-deceptiv... I don't care at all about stock prices, I'm actively shopping for an electric car and Teslas are near the top of my list since they're so technologically advanced, but they're just not very well as a manufacturer or as a responsibly run corporation which annoys me since I'm in corporate finance. As an example, if Tesla and GM both had $10,000 cars for sale. GM's "Cost of Goods Sold" would include the manufacturing costs, costs for R&D and their revenue would only be $8k since the dealer networks have their own books - but then GM isn't responsible for all of the showrooms and sales staff, etc. Tesla's revenue would show $10k, but would only include the cost to manufacturer (the R&D expense is "below the line") and they wouldn't include any costs to have hundreds of showroom locations - even those those showrooms are necessary to sell cars at any volume, and Tesla has to pay for out of that $10k sales price. It's obviously not apples-to-apples to compare those "GAAP Gross Margin" between those two things. |