Musk complains about handouts when Tesla was only profitable due to credits
Tesla’s earnings report dropped today, and news isn’t great. But instead of recognizing his failures that have led to Tesla’s downturn, CEO Elon Musk lashed out with conspiracy theories while also hypocritically failing to acknowledge that his company was only profitable this quarter due to regulatory credits.
The numbers are in on Tesla’s dismal quarter, with sales, profits and margins tanking significantly for the company despite a rising global EV market.
You’d expect a drop in car sales to be top of mind for a car company, but instead of talking about this, CEO Elon Musk opened the call by talking about his ineffective advisory role to a former reality TV host.
Musk is heading up the self-styled “Department of Government Efficiency,” an advisory group that is focused on reducing redundancy in government. The office is not an actual government department and has a redundant mission to the Government Accountability Office, which is an actual government department focused on reducing government waste.
Musk originally claimed that the department would be able to save $2 trillion for the US government, which is actually impossible because federal discretionary spending is $1.7 trillion, which is a (gets out abacus) smaller number than $2 trillion.
He has, of course, failed at this task that anyone with any level of competence would have known was impossible before setting it out for themselves, and now projects that the department will save $150 billion next year, less than a tenth of his original estimate. But even that projection is likely an overstatement, given that most of the supposed savings that DOGE has found are not actual savings at all.
On top of this, the US government’s deficit has grown to the second-highest level on record – with the first happening in 2020, the last time Mr. Trump squatted in the White House. Which means the government isn’t saving money, it is in fact borrowing and spending more of it than ever before.
So, Musk’s tenure in the advisory board has been an unmitigated failure by any realistic account.
But if you listened to Tesla’s call, you wouldn’t have known this, as Musk was quite boastful of his efforts – starting a Tesla conference call with an irrelevant rant about his fake government department, instead of with Tesla business.
He claimed that he has made “a lot of progress in addressing waste and fraud” and that the job is “mostly done,” which is not correct by his own metrics. Musk stated that his purpose is “trying to bring in the insane deficit that is leading our country, the United States, to destruction,” and as we covered above, that deficit has only increased.
But he also went on to spew some rather insane conspiracy theories about the reasons behind his company’s recent failures, all of which of course put the blame on someone else, rather than himself. The buck stops anywhere but here, I guess.
His primary assertion was that the “blowback from the time I’ve been spending in government” (which, again, is an advisory role, not an actual government position) has come mainly from protesters that were “receiving fraudulent money” and are now angry that the government money spigot has been turned off.
Which, of course, he’s provided no evidence for… and he’s provided no evidence for it because it’s false.
Besides, that’s not how protests work. But incorrect claims that protests do work that way are often used by opponents of free speech, with the motivation of putting a chilling effect public participation. Fitting behavior for an enemy of the First Amendment like Elon Musk.
Meanwhile, this assertion also comes from a person who tried and failed to bribe voters to win an election. Perhaps his admiration of Tesla protesters is aspirational – he wishes his ideas were good enough to inspire that sort of grassroots political effort that money, demonstrably, cannot buy.
But this hypocrisy extends beyond Musk’s hatred of free expression, and strikes at the heart of the business he is the titular leader of, Tesla, the organization that has made him into the richest man in the world. Because not only is it not true that Tesla protests are driven by his ineffective government actions (they are, in fact, driven by him doing Nazi stuff all the time), it’s also objectively true that Musk’s companies are a large recipient of government money.
And that’s particularly relevant today, to the very earnings call where Musk made his ridiculous assertion, because in Q1 2025, Tesla only turned a profit due to government credits. Without them, it would have lost money.
Tesla only profitable in Q1 due to regulatory credits
Per today’s earnings report, Tesla earned $595 million in regulatory credits in Q1. But its total net income for the quarter was $409 million.
This means that without those regulatory credits, Tesla would have posted a -$189 million loss in Q1. It was saved not just by credit sales, but credit sales which increased year over year – in the year-ago quarter, Tesla made $442 million in regulatory credits, despite having higher sales in Q1 2024 than in Q1 2025. So not only were credits higher, but credits per vehicle were higher.
This is a common feature of Tesla earnings, and we even said in our earnings preview that we expected it. While Tesla had a bad quarter, nobody expected it to become actually unprofitable, because there was always the possibility of increasing regulatory credit sales to eke out a profitable quarter.
And this has been the case many times in Tesla’s past, as well. In earlier times, Tesla’s first few profitable quarters were decried by the company’s opponents as an accounting trick, suggesting that regulatory credit sales weren’t “real” profits, and that the cars should have to stand on their own.
This is a silly thing to say – businesses do business in the environment that exists, and every business has an incentive structure that includes subsidies and externalities. If we were to selectively write off certain profits for certain businesses, we could make a tortured case that any business isn’t profitable.
Plus, these opponents didn’t extend the same treatment to the oil industry, which is subsidized to the tune of $760 billion per year in the US alone in unpriced externalities, yet that is somehow never mentioned during their earnings calls.
Musk has even claimed, probably correctly, that if all subsidies were eliminated both for EVs and for oil & gas, that EVs would come out ahead compared to the status quo (more recently, Musk has become one of the biggest funders of anti-EV forces, allying himself with a bought-and-paid oil stooge who is giving even more preferential treatment to the oil industry).
But, setting aside the debate over whether credits are valid profits (they are), for years now we’ve been well beyond Tesla’s reliance on credits. The company has produced significant profits, regardless of credit sales, for some time now.
At least, until today. That’s no longer true – Tesla did rely on credits to become profitable in Q1. And Musk starting the call with a ridiculous rant about government handouts not only shows his hypocrisy and projection on this matter, but his detachment from reality itself. He is, truly, too stuck in the impenetrable echo chamber of his self-congratulating twitter feed to realize what an embarrassment he’s being in public – to the point of inventing shadow enemies to explain the very real, very simple explanation that people aren’t buying his company’s cars because he sucks so much.
Charge your electric vehicle at home using rooftop solar panels. Find a reliable and competitively priced solar installer near you on EnergySage, for free. They have pre-vetted installers competing for your business, ensuring high-quality solutions and 20-30% savings. It’s free, with no sales calls until you choose an installer. Compare personalized solar quotes online and receive guidance from unbiased Energy Advisers. Get started here. – ad*
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
GM has scrapped plans to build $55 million hydrogen fuel cell factory in Detroit, triggering a tsunami of headlines about the General’s future plans for hydrogen. The reality? GM isn’t scaling back its hydrogen efforts. It’s thinking bigger.
The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.
MARK TWAIN (sort of)
Like the great Sam Clemens, there seems to be plenty of confidence in the greater automotive press that GM’s decision to cancel a $55 millions fuel cell plant on the former Michigan State Fairgrounds site in Detroit. That plant, a JV with Southeast Michigan’s Piston Automotive, would have created ~140 jobs and built compact hydrogen fuel cells for light- and medium-duty vehicles under the Hydrotec brand.
That plan, frankly, was never going to work. It was always a cynical incentive grab and the first fruits of GM’s Hydrotec efforts were so laughably far behind the state of the electric art that the facts themselves blurred the line between satire and reality. Which, of course, didn’t matter – as long as the incentive money (Biden’s Department of Energy awarded GM $30 million in grants for the State Fairgrounds plant) kept flowing.
The new Trump Administration put an end to that flow last week, however, terminating 321 financial awards for clean energy worth $7.56 billion.
“Certainly the decisions of the DOE are an element of that overall climate but not the only driver,” explained GM spokesperson, Stuart Fowle, in a statement. “We want to prioritize the engineering talent and resources and everything we have to continuing to advance EVs given hydrogen is in a different spot.”
That spot is heavy-duty, off-highway, maritime, and data centers.
Bigger trucks, bigger fuel cells
Instead of dying, GM is continuing on the hydrogen fuel cell it’s been on for literal decades – with no plans (publicly, at least) to shutter its Fuel Cell System Manufacturing joint-venture with Honda in Brownstown Township, MI.
That company is not just developing HFCs, they’re out there selling fuel cells today, to extreme-duty, disaster response, and off-highway equipment customers operating far enough off the grid that access to electricity is questionable and to data center developers for whom access to a continuous flow of energy is mission-critical.
Electrek’s Take
Fuel cells like the ones from GM and Honda will continue to seem like a good idea … for about as long as it takes the heavy equipment guys to watch a ZQUIP video.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Detroit News, FreightWaves, Yahoo!Finance.
If you’re considering going solar, it’s always a good idea to get quotes from a few installers. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
EVs are great, and can unlock more transportation convenience with the ease of charging at home. But for apartment-dwellers, this can be a complicated conversation. So a nonprofit called Forth is here to help, through its Charge at Home program.
One of the main benefits of an electric vehicle is in the convenience of owning and charging the car in the place it spends most of its time. Instead of having to go out of your way to fuel it, you just park it at home, in the same place it spends at least 8 hours a day, and you leave the house every day with a full charge.
But this benefit only applies to those with a consistent parking space which they can easily install charging at. When talking about owners who live in apartment buildings, it can sometimes get more complicated.
While certain states have passed “right to charge” laws to give apartment-dwellers a solution for home charging, apartment charging is nevertheless a bit of a patchwork solution so far.
And as a result of this, EV ownership among apartment renters lags behind that of single-family homeowners. It’s clear that apartments are holding back people from buying EVs, and that’s bad – lots of people live in apartments, and the gas those cars use pollutes the air just as much as any other.
Certain areas where EVs have hit a point of critical mass (namely, the large California cities) have pretty good EV ownership among renters, but it could still be better. And residents are clamoring more and more for easy EV charging in apartment communities.
So, Forth, a nonprofit advocating for equitable access to clean transportation, set up a program called Charge at Home, which is meant to connect renters, apartment building owners or other decisionmakers with resources to help install chargers at multifamily properties.
The site lets you select your situation – a resident or a decisionmaker for a new or existing multifamily development – and then gives you access to tools for your specific situation, whether you be a resident and developer.
The site houses links to help design a multifamily project, find electricians, inform you about right to charge laws or available incentives, and provide case studies, among others.
Charge at Home also hosts roundtable webinars periodically, and includes a library of past webinars with the information you need.
There are a lot of considerations for each of these projects, so it can be helpful to have someone with experience to help you go over it all. Personally, when talking to friends about getting an EV, charging considerations are usually the thing that takes up the bulk of the conversation.
So if the toolkits are still too daunting for you, Charge at Home is offering free charging consultations for multifamily developers, owners, property managers and HOAs.
The charging consultations will last through at least April 2026 – but it wouldn’t hurt to get your requests in soon. Forth may still offer consultations afterwards, but it all depends on funding availability (the program was previously funded by the Department of Energy, which has taken a turn). Regardless, the website will remain up for people to submit questions and find information, whether or not free consultations stick around.
But at the very least, as Forth points out, whether a multifamily development is interested in having EV charging at this moment or not, any developer should think about having the infrastructure, conduit and capacity ready to go for future install of EV chargers, and should consider the needs of current residents who are likely already considering EVs today.
It’s going to be necessary to install this capacity at some point, and doing so earlier can help save money down the line, make your development more attractive to renters today, and allow more renters to make the switch to cleaner transportation which helps air quality and to reduce climate change, both of which harm everyone on the planet.
Head on over to Forth’s Charge at Home site to get access to all the above resources – and to sign up for a consultation before the end of April if you’re a multifamily developer, owner, property manager or HOA.
Update: This article has been updated to account for an extension in program availability.
Electrek’s Take
I’ve long said that the only real problem with EVs is the problem of access to consistent charging for people who don’t have their own garage. Whether this be apartment-dwellers, street-parkers or the like, the electric car charging experience is often less-than-ideal outside of single family homes, at least in North America.
There are workarounds available, like charging at work, or using Superchargers in “third places” where you often spend time, but these still aren’t optimal. The best thing is just to charge your car wherever it spends most of its time, which is your home. When you do that, EVs outshine everything in convenience.
We’ve highlighted some projects before which showed how reasonable it can be to install charging for developments. Every project is going to have its complexities, but when you see projects like this condo complex that managed to install chargers for just $405 per parking spot, all of a sudden it becomes a no-brainer not to have EV charging.
But the fact is, there just aren’t enough apartment complexes out there which have EV charging. So if Forth’s Charge At Home program can help residents or landlords with that, it can go a long way towards solving the only real problem with EVs. Click here to check it out.
The 30% federal solar tax credit is ending this year. If you’ve ever considered going solar, now’s the time to act. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
Baltimore County, Maryland, just brought its first large-scale ground-mounted solar farm online, and it sits on what used to be the Parkton Landfill. The 213-acre site, once a symbol of waste, is now generating clean power that will cut costs, slash emissions, and turn an underused piece of land into a long-term energy asset.
Located north of Baltimore City, Baltimore County is one of Maryland’s largest and most populous counties, and its push toward renewables has major implications for the state’s climate and energy goals.
County Executive Kathy Klausmeier called the project a clear example of innovation meeting sustainability: “We are cutting costs for taxpayers and making investments that benefit our communities for decades.”
The new solar farm will provide around 11% of the Maryland county government’s annual electricity, producing roughly 8.2 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) in its first year. That’s the equivalent of avoiding greenhouse gas emissions from burning over 620,000 gallons of gasoline, powering more than 1,150 homes for a year, or driving 14 million fewer miles in gas cars, according to the EPA.
The 7 MW system includes four large solar arrays of 15,000 ground-mounted photovoltaic panels. It’s part of a growing trend in the US to repurpose capped landfills for renewable energy, turning dormant properties into productive clean energy sites.
Through a power purchase agreement with TotalEnergies, which owns and operates the system, Baltimore County will lock in reduced electricity rates for 25 years, with options to extend the contract for up to 33 years. That long-term deal protects taxpayers from future electricity price hikes while advancing local climate goals.
“Adding another large source of solar electricity to power our County’s facilities reflects our community’s values of making smart investments that take care of the health of our community and environment,” said Greg Strella, the county’s chief sustainability officer.
TotalEnergies Managing Director Eric Potts called the project a “powerful example of transforming underutilized assets into productive resources,” pointing to the dual benefits of cutting emissions and saving money.
Baltimore County’s next landfill solar project, at Hernwood, is expected to come online by 2028. Once that system is up and running, renewables will supply about 55% of the county government’s electricity use.
Read more: The Trump administration just killed the US’s largest solar project
The 30% federal solar tax credit is ending this year. If you’ve ever considered going solar, now’s the time to act. To make sure you find a trusted, reliable solar installer near you that offers competitive pricing, check out EnergySage, a free service that makes it easy for you to go solar. It has hundreds of pre-vetted solar installers competing for your business, ensuring you get high-quality solutions and save 20-30% compared to going it alone. Plus, it’s free to use, and you won’t get sales calls until you select an installer and share your phone number with them.
Your personalized solar quotes are easy to compare online and you’ll get access to unbiased Energy Advisors to help you every step of the way. Get started here.
FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024