Tesla reported its biggest ever quarterly profit this week, notching up "operating profit" of $594m for the three months to March 2021. We dug into the report, to see just how the Tesla economic machine actually works.
Electric cars... and more
The bulk of Tesla's revenue does come from its core business of selling electric vehicles, with around $8.5bn of revenue from automotive sales — but around $1.9bn of revenue in its latest quarter came from other sources.
The largest of those is servicing and other charges to old Tesla cars, a segment that's likely to grow over time as the installed base of Tesla cars grows. Another source was $518m of revenue from selling emissions credits, which has been a lucrative, but surely unsustainable, way for Tesla to make a few extra (million) bucks.
Another $494m came from what Tesla calls Energy Generation & Storage, which relate to sales of solar panels, "powerwalls" and other home charging solutions. This is probably the most often cited division when discussions that "Tesla is so much more than a car company" crop up.
Tesla also booked a $101m of profit from sales of Bitcoin — which the company bought a chunk of earlier this year. So far this has proved a smart move from Musk, although we're not sure how "operational" you can consider trading cryptocurrency is.
