[hwillis]

They also spent $1,491 million on R&D. "Much" is more correct than "almost all", which implies that profit is just the leftovers once expenses are subtracted.

Profit and expenses are choices; the fact that a firm puts all its revenue into SSG&A and R&D does not mean that they can't be profitable. If Tesla's revenue decreased by $533 million, they would probably still target $300-400 million in profit by adjusting their spending. They would do that because even at a lower revenue it still benefits them to report profit, and that benefit is still there even if they spend less on other things.

If a $533 million decrease would not lead to $0 profit, then it doesn't make sense to say that their profit comes from credits. It only makes sense to say that 7% of their revenue comes from credits, and that a significant (but not all, and probably less than half) part of their profit comes from credits.