What are these environmental quotas? The fact is that every automaker is assigned (in Europe and North America) a single strict standard for emissions of harmful substances into the atmosphere. It also applies to Tesla, but since it produces electric vehicles that do not produce CO2 at all, the California automaker has the right to sell its quotas to other brands – in particular, to those whose model range is full of cars with "dirty" internal combustion engines. For example, FCA (Fiat-Chrysler) has long been buying such quotas from Tesla, and since the end of last year – also Honda.
And it is precisely this business that serves as the main source of income for Tesla. Over the past 5 years, it has sold such quotas for $3.3 billion, and in 2020 – for $1.6 billion. And if we take into account that last year the company declared a profit of $721 million, then without such "support" it would simply have gone into the red by about $0.9 billion.
That is, as you can see, the production of electric cars for Tesla is unprofitable. And this despite the fact that every year it produces and sells more and more cars: in 2020, the brand from Fremont shipped just under 500 thousand cars to customers.
