[bryanlarsen]

He said that Tesla was unprofitable on a per car basis. The whole company including R&D, SG&A etc was profitable, so unless the solar part of the company was subsidizing the car business, that's a flat out falsehood. We can reasonably argue whether GM or Tesla are more profitable per car, but that wasn't the original claim.

[cthalupa]

Sorry for the late response, but, yes, their car business is being subsidized. They lose money on each car. It is not being subsidized by solar, however.

Multiple states in the US require companies sell a certain amount of zero-emission vehicles or buy regulatory credits from companies that do sell that amount. Tesla is one of these companies they buy credits from. They were paid 1.6 billion USD in 2020 for these credits. That is more than double their 2020 net income. [1]

[1] https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/investing/tesla-profitability...