저자: Kevin · 외국인
요약 보기
테슬라는 배출가스 규제 크레딧(ZEV) 및 CAFE 벌금이 법안 서명으로 사실상 0이 되면서 규제 크레딧 수익이 사라질 예정이다. 1분기 규제 크레딧 5.95억 달러 등 크레딧이 영업이익을 크게 떠받쳐 왔기 때문에 3분기 이후 실적 및 EPS 급감(일시 적자 가능)이 예상되며, 3분기는 세액공제 선반영 효과로 버티고 4분기가 첫 완전 공백 분기다. 시장은 2026년 1월 실적 발표 전까지 고통을 반영할 가능성이 있으나, 로보택시·옵티머스 성과나 저가 모델 2 발표 시 반등 가능성도 언급. 채널 자체 판단으로는 ADAS 무상 배포 등 BYD 방식 도입을 바람직하다고 봄.
다듬은 글
Time for yet another update on Tesla. Take a look at this. This is a whole lot of text. Don't worry, we're going to break it down and make sense of all of this. But basically, Tesla has some serious work to do because not only is Elon Musk now thinking about launching his own political party, which obviously isn't going to get enough mainstream votes to be large enough as a Democratic or Republican party, but that's actually not his intention.
He's astute enough to realize that. What is Tesla facing in the next 6 months that maybe kind of flew under the radar in this big beautiful bill? Well, it has to do with the elimination of the zero emission vehicle credits. So, under the Congressional Review Act in on May 22nd, the federal government limited states from imposing their own emission standards.
On top of that, the monetary penalty for producing too many gas combustion vehicles versus electric vehicles is getting set to zero upon the signing of the big beautiful bill. Now, that's a whole lot of talk there and a lot of confusion that's going to go around that unless we break that down even more.
So, let's put it this way. On page 159 of the big beautiful bill, corporate average fuel economy penalties are being reduced to 0. And they're being reduced to 0 as soon as the act is signed. So, two big things just happened. Number one, Congress said states can't do their own regulations on emissions, like requiring electric vehicles or incentivizing uh zero emission vehicles through some form of credit program.
The federal government is also removing the fines for not producing a high enough percentage of electric vehicles, which typically companies like Ford and GM would end up having to pay fines unless they bought excess zero emission credits from another company like Tesla. Right here at the top, you could see automotive regulatory credits.
Tesla's automotive regular credits have bounced between $442 million in Q1 of last year to $890 million in Q2, 739 million Q3, 692 million in Q4, and 595 million in Q1. Now, Q1 2025 was particularly tough for Tesla because it was a quarter we only delivered 336,000 vehicles. That's compared to the 384,000 vehicles that we just delivered in Q2.
And when we come down to look at Tesla's actual operating margin, they only brought in $399 million of operating margin. And since automotive credits are basically free money for Tesla with essentially no margin cost, Tesla collected over $590 million of zero expense money. In other words, if it weren't for these credits, Tesla would have had negative operating earnings in Q1.
Now, that may not matter because there's so much hope on electric vehicles becoming the autonomous vehicles of the future. That's exactly what Barclays writes as well that any kind of negative volume concerns are being overshadowed by the autonomous vehicle narrative, which is great for Tesla, but it does create some potential for a V-shaped collapse in earnings per share.
Now, why that matters? Well, if we have a V-shaped collapse, in other words, a collapse and then a recovery, which I would expect because you'd get growth off of a low number, once these ZEV credits go away, Tesla's earnings per share are likely to fall substantially, potentially briefly into a negative period and then recover from there.
But during that process, Tesla's PE ratio is going to look even more sky-high than the 186 PE ratio it has now on the forward 12-month. and their PEG ratio is going to look even more high relative to the or even higher relative to the 4x PEG ratio that they have now which is also probably two times what it should be.
So that says that said it's likely that come the you know the third quarter is probably going to be our first full quarter without these zero emission vehicle credits since the bill is being signed on July 4th and the third quarter just began. Happy Independence Day. Happy July uh you know Q3. By the way, we got a big house hack update coming out soon, by the way.
But within give us about two weeks. We just got to get the board to approve some of these announcements that we're making uh before we actually make them and and they're pretty huge. So, pretty exciting. But anyway, um Q3, so happy Q3. Q3 will probably be the first full quarter without the ZEV credits.
The CRA review was May 22nd, so that was, you know, a month and a half ago. But the ZEVE credit penalty going to zero effectively making those ZEV credits near worthless probably won't be seen fully until Q3 this quarter. So, you know, we'll get those numbers in October of of this year. That's going to suck.
But Q3 is going to be buffered by the fact that in Q3 we have the pull forward of the ex like these expiring tax credits, the $7,500 vehicle tax credit. So, even though Q3 is going to suck with ZEV credits, we're going to pull forward demand for cars. people who want Teslas and want that $7,500 credit or 4,000 for a used car.
That expires September 30th, which is the end of Q3. That means Q4 is going to be the first full quarter where you have no ZEV credits and you're following a pull forward quarter. That sucks. So Q4 is going to suck. But we don't actually get that data until January of 2026, which means absent some form of explosive success on Optimus or Robo Taxi or an introduced cheaper Model 2 or Model Q or whatever you want to call it.
I think Janu like markets are going to start pricing in some pain between now and January of 2026. That said, it could be a big buying opportunity because Tesla's going to have to go through this credit removal band, like removing that sort of bandage or crutch, which Elon's always expected that eventually they would go through.
So, I don't think there's really a Tesla investor who's like, "Oh no, we're going to lose our free government money." It's just more going to be like this period of time that you kind of have to get through. And again, I don't think we're going to have optimist success, like huge Optimus success within, you know, this year here.
But any kind of expansion of robo taxi would be great or the introduction of a model 2. Now, personally, and I've been saying this for a while, but I kind of think we should be going to getting as many ADAS vehicles on the road as possible. And that's actually a method that BYD uses right now. They give away their ADAS software, their self-driving software for free.
And Mexico is now outpourcing outpacing Chinese imports relative to US imports of vehicles according to CNBC here despite the fact that we have a a USMCA agreement a trade agreement with Mexico which is crazy and sort of doubles down on this idea that we'd probably all be driving Chinese vehicles if it were possible.
That said, I have to say some of the BYD self-driving footage is really, really impressive. Here's an example where a car passes it on the left and the car nicely slows and stops in the middle of the intersection, which is remarkable. I mean, Teslas will do this as well. I'm just I'm more just trying to point out like this this has already caught up in some regards.
This seems to be a vlogger who's posting this video. There were a lot of like edited and sponsored videos that I didn't want to post. By the way, I love that they have this permanent digital mirror right here. I have the Cybert truck. The mirror is totally worthless. And even though yes, I could get the rear view mirror on the center console, you have to remember like that takes effort to pull it up and set it up.
And sometimes when I'm in the middle of driving, I just want to see the traffic behind me. Like if traffic in front of me is slamming on the brakes and I'm driving, you know, I like to be able to look behind me before I slam on the brakes. Even sometimes with autopilot, of course, I could use the side mirrors to do that, but it doesn't help me if there's like a motorcycle right in between, right?
So, I do think this is really cool, but it doesn't surprise me that Elon doesn't have a digital mirror like this because margins, baby. That said, you could clearly see this car is going to change lanes here by the indicator to the right. So, changes lanes. The fact that it doesn't get anywhere close to this fence, pretty impressive.
Uh, and then moves over and does signal to move over again. This is pretty impressive for a BYD vehicle here. Now, they obviously sped this up a little bit. Uh, you got some crazy intersection that just occurred there. You've got lane changes. I mean, some of the footage that we were just scrolling through on our live stream was very impressive that we saw with BYD.
Uh, and BYD, mind you, also introduces LAR based uh, technology on some of their newer models. They launched their LAR technology not at the start of their operations of ADAS, which they give away for free, but actually in 24, just in August, and they introduced this vehicle at just $24,000, which is pretty remarkable.
And it explains a lot of this expansion you're seeing of BYD globally, whether it's Brazil, whether it's Mexico, whether it's Europe, or obviously China, uh, where chi Tesla is, you know, we finally got back to growth, but we're still losing share. So, it's kind of impressive. Uh, and and I think this BYD approach is really smart.
I wish that Tesla would take the approach of just throw the ads in for free and and get more miles, get more training, get more technology, incentivize people to buy the car, get those vehicle deliveries up up. Uh that would be absolutely amazing in my opinion. But then again, just my opinion. So my hope is that in addition to getting, you know, more of an ADAS expansion for Tesla, we also get some kind of actual Model 2.
Everybody keeps talking about this line that Tesla puts in their earnings calls, and I cover this obviously in detail about, oh, we're going to launch more affordable vehicles in 2025. I believe, I hope I'm wrong, but I believe all they're talking about are more affordable Cybert trucks, more affordable Model 3s, and more affordable Model Y's.
I think Elon has a really big stubbornness against changing the lines, the manufacturing lines to introducing a new model. Uh, and and it's probably because he kind of got burned on the Cybertruck. I love the Cybertruck. I'm not here to poop on the Cybertruck, but let's just face it, sales are not good for the Cybertruck.
Elon Musk is also very pissed obviously about Donald Trump. Uh, but in this Donald Trump piece and the Wall Street Journal where, you know, they say things like Elon saying, you know, what good is Doge saving $160 billion when the debt ceiling is increased by $5 trillion. In that same piece, the Wall Street Journal quotes a BBC interview with one of Elon Musk's ex-wives.
And that interview talks about how Elon is actually a very emotional person. Uh what they say is the following. They say he feels with incredible purity the emotion that he is feeling at the time. Whatever the emotion is, he feels things very deeply. I've heard it said that he's cold and emotionless.
And that could not be further from the truth. He's the most emotional person I know. I think also that emotion can make him very stubborn against the Model 2. Remember, Tesla's board of directors wanted a Model 2. Elon shut it down. I don't know if that will ever change. I hope it does because I think it'll be a catalyst that you kind of need when things get a little tougher in the second half of the year.
That said, it's also worth paying attention to this. Elon Musk is not talking about taking over an entire political uh party uh like the Republican party or the Democratic party. Instead, he's talking about being laser focused on just two or three Senate seats for 8 to 10 House districts. This makes sense.
It would give them the power to sort of be like uh the Joe Mansion Kirstston Cinema and take control of whether policy is able to pass on a margin or not. Basically force more bipartisanship. Will he be able to bankroll enough of those districts to pull that off and actually get like in the middle people?
I don't know. But we'll see. We will see. Uh so, you know, I'm optimistic and I'm hopeful, but I also recognize there are definitely headwinds coming for Tesla and uh probably also just headwinds coming with just tariff policy in general. And I think it's one of the reasons why we've been doing such fun so much fundamental analysis on companies frankly like Symbotic which you know we've started talking about Symbotic uh here just this year and we've been talking about how this company is has a real potential to just keep exploding.
I think its valuation is a little high right now on the robotics front uh but the momentum has taken over at this point and volumes are skyrocketing for this company. So I think it's going to be another one to pay attention to. Uh that said that's my take on what's going on with Tesla. .
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