this post was submitted on 13 May 2024
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[Dormant] Electric Vehicles

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[–] ma11en@lemmy.world 56 points 6 months ago (2 children)

I bet there's some magical tax system in play here.

1 billion in imaginary r&d costs split over 1 years sales.

[–] shitescalates@midwest.social 16 points 6 months ago

This was the whole point of restructuring. Gaming our tax and legal system to maximize profits. Put all the losses into your LLC.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 15 points 6 months ago (2 children)

It's basically the entire year cost divided by cars sold or something like that yes.

It's a terrible way to do it.

For example, pre pandemic, Ford was actually just gross margin positive on the sale of the Mach E, which was quite impressive, but it was overall a loss due to all the R&D.

This is the same attack people used against Tesla early on as well. Since the Model S, Tesla was nearly always gross margin positive on their vehicles, but because of the massive R&D were still in the red.

At any moment, Tesla could have dramatically slowed growth and been profitable sooner, but you don't grow and expand that way, so it was years of Tesla loses $X per car.

It was terrible then, it's terrible now, it'll always be terrible.

[–] vinceman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

What do you mean Pre Pandemic Mach E? Vehicle released December 2020 as a 21 model year.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world 2 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Sorry my bad then, before the supply chain got Uber fucked by the pandemic.

It was originally gross margin positive. Then the supply chains for fucked and it was no longer gross margin positive.

Then the price cuts started happening after the supply chains resolved and it couldn't get back there for awhile.

I don't know if it is or isn't GM positive today.