I'll explain for you what my comment means. Operating income is a measure we use to see how profitable a company is at its core business after you subtract the costs of running that business.
Yes the credits are a small portion of Tesla's income but after account for the costs of building cars what's' left is the operating income. Those credits are about half o that income, without them the operating income( a measure of if the core business works) would be cut in half.
Some of the 'cost' of building cars is paid for with money from 'tax credits'.
It's very clear on the diagram I linked above. You can't attribute 100% of 'operating income' to one thing. If anything you need to attribute things proportional to their inputs. Otherwise it's misleading.
Then you create a strawman scenario of 'without tax credits...'. Well no, without tax credits the spending policies and prices of other revenue streams change in order to hit net income targets.
I'll explain for you what my comment means. Operating income is a measure we use to see how profitable a company is at its core business after you subtract the costs of running that business.
Yes the credits are a small portion of Tesla's income but after account for the costs of building cars what's' left is the operating income. Those credits are about half o that income, without them the operating income( a measure of if the core business works) would be cut in half.
That is a significant measure.