How do you make money when half of the profit you make depends on government? You make EVS, is how.

But first, you get the government to require that other companies either reduce what’s called their “carbon footprint” – or buy credits from you for making EVs. The credits are viewed by the government – by the regulatory apparat – as equivalent to the company that buys them reducing the amount of “carbon” its operations produce, thereby satisfying the regs without actually reducing the amount of “carbon” produced by that company’s operations.

It works like a supermarket coupon for 10 percent off.

Just without the free exchange. A more accurate description would be supermarket “a” having to buy credits from supermarket “b” in order be allowed to sell anything at all.

This, in a nutshell, is the business model that built Tesla – and which now keeps it afloat. That – plus artificially inflated stock valuation based on government (via the regulatory apparat) essentially requiring that more EVs be manufactured – and eventually, only EVs –  leaving people no alternative to buying them.

The Wall Street Journal reports that half of Tesla’s second quarter profits – which by the way are down by about 45 percent – were “earned” (to misuse a word) via “selling” carbon credits to other companies that are effectively forced to purchase them in order to be allowed to sell anything at all.

Hence the air fingers quote marks bracketing the latter word. A “sale” that involves coercion is like a “date” that involves rape, in other words.

And rape can be financial as well as sexual.

Tesla used financial rape to finance the development of its first batch of EVs – chiefly by making other car companies (which at the time made no “zero emissions” EVs of their own) pay to offset the costs of designing and manufacturing them – by using the government to coerce them into buying credits from Tesla to satisfy government requirements that they also make “zero emissions” devices, irrespective of the absence of any market for them.

This costs them, of course.

But it was easier to just cut Tesla a check than it was to design and manufacture EVs of their own that they knew they would probably not be able to sell. Lots of hassle avoided by just paying up.

And so they did, bankrolling their own “competition,” which of course it isn’t, really – because absent government, there would be no Tesla. Except, perhaps as a very low volume manufacturer of extremely expensive toys for those with the money to spend on them.

Other companies that don’t make vehicles also “buy” credits from Tesla, which is the only manufacturer of “zero emissions” EVs exclusively. Tesla gets a lot of credit – and extorted cash – for that.

The other car companies now build EVs, too – but only enough to satisfy the “zero emissions” regulations and sales quotas that have been imposed in states such as CA. Not enough to “sell” carbon credits of their own – much as some of them would probably love to get into that “business.”

As recently as last year – the final year you could still buy cars like the Charger and Challenger as well as a V8 in a Ram truck – Stellantis was “buying” credits from Tesla worth millions annually (and billions, overall; you can read more about that here).

It no longer has to buy them – because it no longer sells the Charger and Challenger or the Hemi V8. Of course, it no longer sells those vehicles – or that engine – which used to provide the earnings needed to pay the credits and kept Dodge and Ram in the business of selling vehicles.

Dodge and Ram may not have to pay Tesla, going forward. But that’s like a person declaring bankruptcy so as to avoid having to pay creditors.

Meanwhile, Tesla’s “earnings” – all this italicizing can be tedious but it’s necessary in the interests of etymological honesty – are down by 45 percent, not counting the half of that that’s due to government taking (and redistributing). If that taking were taken into account, Tesla’s latest “earnings” would be half what Tesla just reported. Put another way, Tesla’s losses would be unsustainable – a word the Left loves to use to deride businesses that don’t require government to remain in business.

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Via https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2024/07/29/milking-the-drying-up-cow/