It's like we're completely ignoring the role that CA's clean car requirements and incentivies have had on the EV market, including making it possible for Tesla to exist in the first place, and for financially keeping Tesla afloat for the many years of failed execution under Elon's leadership.
SpaceX owes its success to Gwynne Shotwell, not Elon Musk. It's her ability to execute that has SpaceX on top.
AI has been a thing for decades. But it's cool to see Elon Musk take credit for yet another thing he didn't actually do.
Tesla has relied on CA ZEV credits to stay afloat at several points in its lifespan.
It has also relied on the CA clean car incentives to sell the Models S and 3. One of the major factors in the current popularity of Teslas is that a lot of its competition are no longer eligible for those incentives. This is why Wall Street has been so concerned about the end of the federal incentives in 2019.
This is like saying some company that was barely profitable only survived because of lower corporate taxes at the time. While technically true, it's just stating the economic reality that everyone dealt with at the time, and doesn't really impart much useful information. Any other company in the same market with a similar offering could just as easily have taken advantage of the incentives offered.
> Tesla has relied on CA ZEV credits to stay afloat at several points in its lifespan.
What are you trying to express here? I think you believe it is self explanatory, but it's not to me. Tesla took advantage of government incentives just as any other company with a similar offering could have (and did!). The original statement was that Tesla accelerated electric car deployments. CA definitely deserves a lot of credit for spurring that with incentives, but Tesla goes hand-in-hand with that. The incentives are also to encourage the market to provide good offerings in that space, which it responded and did. The reality shows that the major auto makers have been slow to respond with lackluster offerings until very recently (if even then).
While I agree with the gist of your argument, corporate taxes (mostly) apply to profits, and therefore have no influence on profitable/not profitable.
(Payroll, VAT, and some other taxes do have the effect you describe. To excuse my nitpicking: that confusion over corporate taxation has a somewhat outsized effect on typical discussions of tax policy)
> One of the major factors in the current popularity of Teslas is that a lot of its competition are no longer eligible for those incentives.
This is exactly backwards. Tesla was the first to use up its 200000 credits, back in July. GM is the second, in December. Everyone else has a long way to go before running out of incentives.
No, you have mixed up the incentives. The federal tax credit incentive expired. The California incentives, some of which are not tax related, still apply to Teslas.
SpaceX owes its success to Gwynne Shotwell, not Elon Musk. It's her ability to execute that has SpaceX on top.
AI has been a thing for decades. But it's cool to see Elon Musk take credit for yet another thing he didn't actually do.