You still have to pay out warranty work either way. Someone has to fix it after all.
There are many people who have made the claim that Tesla doesn’t really make money. You can google it up. Just look for stuff like “tesla profits” or “tesla not profitable” and you see it. Also, the only people who do vigorously insistent that Tesla is profitable are the fanboy investors and some of the least credible analysts out there. It screams gaslighting no matter how you look at all.
You have to build the entire system out yourself. That costs a lot of money. The dealership model also costs the manufacturer basically zero dollars, because it really profits on used car sales and maintenance works. You don't make anymore money by having your own dealerships. The whole argument that there's some secret behind Tesla's business smacks of gaslighting, not something that actually holds up to reason.
It's been a long standing issue with Tesla's accounting. No one can really explain how profits are actually being generated going back years, especially considering everyone in the West is losing money on EVs. It's also being ran entirely by sycophants and people with minimal qualifications, with zero accountability anywhere. So it just seems, via Occam's razor, that they're cooking the books.
That depends on how bullshit the numbers really are. If it is just Jack Welch level of financial shenanigans, you can see a stump version of the company eventually surviving. If it is worse than that, then probably not.
They have a direct sales model which is more expensive to operate and exaggerates profit margin. There’s also reason to believe they are wildly understating warranty costs plus ignoring R&D costs. People who look closely have consistently concluded that Tesla cannot really be making money, or have very narrow profit margins at best.
Huge price cuts will compound these problems dramatically.
Enron was a huge business that had millions of customers. It just happened to lose money while doing so. The crime was that they hid that last part.
There's good reason to believe that Tesla is an Enron-esque style fraud. No one in charge has shown any business acumen, and no one can explain how it is actually profitable. But that requires only stooges and yes-men on the board. There cannot be any accountability.
That's true of ethanol, but not biodiesel. High cost is a consequence of insufficient supply. Basically, it was how the market stopped further biofuel growth.
Then China is just repeating Brazil. Brazil was one of the few countries that could pull off biofuels in a real way. But it was a unique situation, and it doesn’t work elsewhere.
"Flying cars" are pretty much always shitty helicopters.
This is basically how all green energy ideas start. Wind and solar power went through the same thing. What we're seeing are people who dismiss new ideas, either because they're climate change deniers or because they're outdated and don't want to see change they don't understand.
Then what, Tesla owns their own repair and maintenance service? That also costs money.
Ultimately, you’re going to accept that there’s no way around some of the cost of running a car company. If you won’t accept it, then there’s nothing I can say to change your mind.
Also, most of the numbers can’t be trusted. It’s known as “regulatory capture.” And they’re probably not the only one. Likely many companies have doctored accounting numbers these days. If anything, this is a huge problem in business today.