I live in Texas. Most women here are so fat that, unless you’re into plumpers, you don’t want to see them topless. Not fat shaming, I just happen to not want to see obese women topless. I live in a college town.

Photos or it didn’t happen.

I never focused on the tax credits and never suggested that they were ANY part of Tesla’s business, just the opposite. To crow about a profit that would not have happened were it not for those credits is my complaint. Take those away and Tesla would have gone nine quarters without a profit. Now the closest, most…

The best minivan $150,000 can buy is:

I’m not arguing the tax credit as a percentage of revenue, I agree(d) with your number, if you read my response my point was what was the revenue as a percentage of PROFITS. Sorry, without the tax credits there would be no profit. Eight quarters with no profit, they finally turn a profit, and that wouldn’t have…

Honestly, while the merger with Solar City makes their cash crunch even worse, Solar City could arguably improve things, too. How? Shut down most of Solar City’s operations. Stop leasing out to new customers, and turn to just maintenance of their existing customer base. Their overhead would plummet, but revenue would…

Really? And what do they represent as a percentage of profit? Sorry, but without the tax credits there would be no profit.

It’s not so much that it’s a risk, most mergers are, it’s that this one doesn’t look to benefit anyone other than Solar City stockholders ie Musk himself.

Uh. no. The big three have developed, tested every single piece of technology that people credit Musk for developing...and determined that it was commercially unfeasible. Musk, with the help of piles of you checks from you and me, would come to the same conclusion.

Then all auto shares would be down too and speaking of gamble Uber and Tesla are the darlings of the market and neither have turned a decent profit.

“If Ford spend 40% of gross revenue on R&D and another 25% on capital expenditures”

Except they know better and prefer to stay in business 5 years from now.

What is stopping Tesla Motors from increasing Revenue which would bring these percentages down?

Telsa will be bankrupt before long. Their tech isn’t good enough, and they don’t have scale. The Bolt will be on the market at least a full year before the first Model 3 delivers.

In what ways were the original auto makers subsidized like Tesla is today?

If GM forced Cadillac to make that hypothetical car they would be hung on Wall Street. The automotive industry is what financial-types would call an unattractive market.Simply put, the more tenured auto manufacturers won’t begin producing EV’s en masse until it is as profitable or more so than the current paradigm.…

Lutz was at Ford of EUROPE from 1974-85. The EU didn’t have a “malaise era.” In fact, that era at Ford of Europe saw Ford emerge as a leading builder of sporty small cars.

iTunes is an accessory, carbon credits aren’t, I don’t get the analogy. You either make money by actually building something and/or providing a service , or you don’t.

All adding Solar City did was put money in Musk’s pocket at the expense of Tesla as a whole. Why the hell did the Tesla board approve the purchase when every financial analyst has said it’s a bad idea?

The problem with the credits isn’t that it’s underhanded or “skirting the rules”. It’s more the fact that relying on a tax subsidy as your primary source of income is a pretty poor long term business model. Especially now that every other manufacturer is working to introduce credible EV’s to compete against Tesla,…

Nope. He was at BMW and Ford of Europe during the malaise era and had a hand in the launch of the 3-Series, Fiesta XR2, Escort XR3, RS200, etc. He came to Ford US in 1985 after the Malaise Era ended and engineered the rebirth of Ford with the Taurus and Explorer launches.

Amazon also didn’t have a well funded competition. GM already has made a strong commitment and German 3 are to follow soon.