28 April 2021

Jalopnik: “Tesla loses a Lot of Money selling Cars, but makes it all back on Credits and Bitcoin”

That second point is particularly interesting, as Tesla purchased $1.5 billion worth of BTC, announced that the company would begin accepting BTC as payment for its cars, which drove up the value of BTC, then sold enough BTC to make a hundred million in profit. Strange how that works, eh? Surely nothing untoward going on there. Not at all. DOGE TO THE MOON! #hodlgang

Without the $619 million in credits and BTC sales, Tesla would have actually managed to lose $181 million in Q1. In that time, the company shifted 184,800 3/Y units, and while it didn’t build a single X or S in Q1, it sold 2020 units from previously-built inventory. That means the company lost around $970 per car sold in Q1.

Bradley Brownell

Confirmation on the previous assumptions about Tesla’s reasons for investing in Bitcoin: short-term gains through speculation to offset losses from what should be its main business, electric car manufacturing. A loss of $970 per car sold does not seem very impactful though; compared to Model Y’s price of around $50.000, it represents only a 2% loss, so it should not be hard to overcome with increased efficiency.

On a related note: interesting Twitter thread on the quality of Tesla cars, given the recent news of one catching fire, apparently while in driverless mode. The most frightening part:

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