Cash on Hand as a metric of good health.
If Tesla are not selling as many Cars and Storage is a cutthroat low margin business surely cash on hand is going to start reducing from here on until a new revenue stream makes an appearance.
The X, S and Cybertruck can't possibly be cash flow positive on such small volumes and German plant can't be making much money at such a low occupancy rate.
Either they ignore this and try to keep up appearances or deal with cutting costs to keep the cash on hand stable.
Is this a good metric to keep an eye upon. Increasing sales are now a thing of the past and margin is heading toward traditional auto manufactuer levels especially now that high end trim levels are being cannibalised by the new low trim levels on both model 3 and Y.
If you think of Tesla as a startup tech unicorn they only have so much runway to play with and Über engaged in billions of dollars of shareholder value destruction before they started to gain traction.
What do you think?
Yeah cash on hand will be pretty important but I don’t really think it will serve as the basis of “health.” I expect their cash reserve to decrease for some time as I think Tesla is no longer going to make much of an effort to increase vehicles sales. I think this Q4 was pretty telling given they didn’t pull any of the demand levers for that final end of year push like they normally do. No 0% financing, no free FSD trials, no free lifetime supercharging, no free color/option upgrades, no inventory discounts.
Cash on hand will likely decrease as I anticipate their R&D will increase heavily these next couple years. They will obviously keep an eye on everything but I expect we won’t see profit growth until robotaxi and energy deployments really come online.
They’ve already shifted their focus to energy and AI/robotics for quite some time so I believe auto revenue will continue to dwindle.
What 'auto revenue' exactly? Direct sales of cars? There's a giant automation dam about to burst that will revolutionize transportation and make private vehicle ownership obsolete. How this is still hard to comprehend is... hard to comprehend. "Selling 'x' cars" as a business model is done (unless you're Ferrari I guess).
Yeah I agree that ultimately robotaxi will eventually become a financially cheaper method of transportation compared to vehicle ownership, but that will not happen for quite some time. There are literally cars on the road today from the 1990s that are pretty common and not rare to see. You’re describing a situation that likely won’t manifest for another 50 years. Should we keep track of Tesla’s vehicles sales for the next 50 years? Probably not, but in the immediate future vehicles sales are still what keep the lights on for the company so we can’t dismiss it so Willy nilly like you are wanting to.
This being an investors forum we should absolutely keep track of 'the next' in particular when there's very little exposure to this out there - even people who've heard of FSD dismiss it as "promised in 2018". I bet a lot of horse riders never heard of a car until one hit them.
The 'Tesla is a car company' thesis has been gone for a while - it's an AI and robotics technology company. By your logic nVidia is still a company that sells GeForce graphics cards.
I think you're pouring it on a bit thick here, we get it, you're not focused on auto revenue
Tesla's own internal studies (led Drew Baglino, Tesla SVP for energy and powertrain engineering, basically the de-facto CTO) showed that Robotaxi was unlikely to be profitable:
https://electrek.co/2025/04/16/elon-musk-shut-down-internal-tesla-analysis-that-showed-robotaxi-would-lose-money/
Rohan Patel, Tesla's former VP for business development, confirmed on the record that the study was real and that its conclusions were pretty damning for the robotaxi effort:
Despite this, Musk went full steam ahead on Robotaxi, and abruptly cancelled the NV91 program.
These claims that Robotaxi will immediately revolutionize personal transport are a fantasy, and dedicated Tesla veterans knew it.
There are far too many "investors" (speculators is a more accurate term IMO) who are sleepwalking towards a Tesla fiscal cliff, because they do not acknowledge the true risks in what Tesla is doing
I think it’s possible the S and X are profitable. I think somewhere in the 5-8K per quarter range those two are profitable… they’re around break-even if nothing else.
Cybertruck production is probably losing money.
I don’t expect any of them to be discontinued though. Cancelling them would trigger a lot of negative sentiment and lose them sales of the 3 and Y, I think - those lost sales would hurt more than any savings from cancelling other vehicles.
Plus really to save money you need to actually reduce hours or lay people off… which then means spending a lot on rehiring to ramp to Cybercab production. They’ll just pivot production to Cybercab as soon as possible.
Another alternative - albeit speculative - is using Optimus for cost-reduction and 24/7 production OR automated made-to-order & delivery.
Every model is profitable for tesla already lmao
The X has never been profitable as far as we know. The S was profitable for 2 quarters before the X started production, then Tesla wasn’t profitable again until the 3 ramp was well underway.
Y and Cybertruck were both announced as being profitable a few months into deliveries. Cybertruck deliveries massively fell since that announcement so they may not be profitable anymore.
They said they were cash flow positive on cybertruck over a year ago.
Yes, when Cybertruck volumes and prices were higher. Lower prices and/or lower volumes may have turned it to be cash flow negative since then.
The volumes were never great, and they had ramp up costs to contend with in the beginning. I think people use the lens of legacy auto when trying to understand Tesla. Tesla hasn't sold cars at a loss historically. Not sure why people think they would now.
Tesla absolutely has sold cars at a loss before. The Roadster was never profitable. We know the X lost so much money that it made the company as a whole lose money despite profits from the S, up until profits from the 3 made up for it. There’s not much reason to think the X ever became profitable after that. And the S and 3 each had an unprofitable ~year until production ramped sufficiently high to cover the cost of having the assembly lines.
The Model Y is the only vehicle that was profitable within the first ~quarter of deliveries starting. I can’t remember when the Cybertruck became profitable… I can’t be bothered to look it up right now, but I think it’s volumes were substantially higher at that time, and it’s starting price was about $100K at that time.
Tesla has tons of cash on hand and little debt.
The important thing to look at is growth, as Tesla's entire valuation is based on that. Tesla is not growing auto sales but they are growing energy sales.
In the future, Tesla's success will be attached to their ability to deliver autonomous taxis and robots.
100 percent!
This is exactly the risk that I've been warning people here about for months, but folks either refuse to listen, or are incapable of comprehending the magnitude of the problem.
Elon Musk has bet all of Tesla on a speculative AI revolution.
At the same time, he has deliberately undercut Tesla's foundational businesses, which provide the cash flow necessary for that AI product roadmap. If Tesla doesn't bring in cash with vehicle and energy storage pack sales, the AI product roadmap becomes in danger of being unfunded.
Robot production lines (for Cybercab and Bots) are expensive.
AI training datacenters are extremely expensive.
We have no idea how much Tesla will ultimately need to spend on datacenters for AI training.
It is monumentally stupid for Musk to endanger Tesla's cash flow when nobody knows the true cost of the AI pivot.
Maybe Tesla will achieve these new AI goals in time. Or they could find themselves in a financial bind and the company stock loses 85% of its value.
Why do you think that?
X, S, and Cybertruck made up 2.7% of production in Q4 and ~3% of all 2025 production. What happens with those simply does not matter in the big picture finances.
I think cash on hand is an incredibly important metric, but really as a measure of guaranteed runway and value.
Their cash keeps increasing billions per year. Very good financial shape even tho bears cry how they "dont make any money" lmao
huh? Despite their massive R&D spending for robotaxis and training centers, Tesla grows it's cash every quarter. The number of deliveries and especially their energy product growth will see them increase their cash pile even further for years to come. Except robotaxi will make its way onto the balance sheet by Q4 2026 and by then the cash will grow even faster.
The Tesla story is incredibly simple I think.
If FSD works they make bank.
If optimus works they may Scrooge MCDuck money.
If neither work and they're just a car and battery company then the stock price will crash hard to maybe $100.
More like $20. Tesla as a car company has zero future. No new cars or designs or major improvements (New Y is incremental) on the horizon and tanking sales amid increasing competition and anti-Tesla blowback.
No new cars or designs or major improvements on the horizon? If you're focused on consumer vehicles, perhaps that's true. But there are two major new vehicles being worked on right now, and you may not like it but this shows where they're focused:
cybercab - full production ramp starts in April 2026
robovan - TBD
These two vehicles will be their flagship FSD vehicles serving different needs.
Plus, they've been quietly redesigning their semi and starting to work towards a production ramp -- which has been late, as is the custom with Elon's predictions and wildly optimistic estimates.
As for your other comment, there's not as much anti-Tesla blowback as the media or reddit would have you believe. They did have a pretty significant drop in car sales, but look at the market in general. Legacy auto is in shambles: VW is licensing their name out now, Honda and Nissan are partnering, and most of them have backed away from investing in EVs or discontinued them altogether -- and all of them have stopped working on FSD technologies. 2025 was a dismal year all around, and for the companies unable to even make a profit was a disaster. Even BYD would be in flames if they weren't so heavily subsidized by the Chinese government and buffered by their battery business. Tesla held strong making a profit on every car sold.
Well, I was talking about consumer vehicles, which is Tesla's bread and butter.
In positive cases - Lets say TSLA FSD captures 50% taxi market in US and EU. What’s the revenue projection? Robots are even bigger stretch i guess. We don’t even know if a market exists for that.
The main point of FSD is that it captures more than the taxi market. Everyone will use ridehail way more if it's cheaper.
Ubers cost something like $2 a mile, though it varies a lot. Tesla coming in a $1 per mile or even down to $0.50 a mile really changes things.
Imagine an Uber ride you've been on, how much easier would it be to agree if it were 1/4 the price?
Especially if it comes with privacy to listen to music, nap or watch stuff on the screen it's a better experience than driving yourself.
Sure. Wouldn’t that lower the overall individual car ownership? Let’s assume that business is not impacted, what is your estimation of taxi revenue and profit? In say year 2026,27-30?
Here's one big breakdown if you're interested, it's pretty hyper bullish
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5OpEpmckZg
I do not think any of that is true. Granted, the margins maybe less than for the Model Y, but I'd be surprised if they lose lose money on any of them.
Tesla pursues efficiency in all things.
It’s pretty clear Tesla has been pivoting their revenue streams for a while now. They’re not just doing the same thing year after year expecting a different result. The market bets on the future now. Most people can’t grasp the potential so they just say auto sales are down and they can make any money in the future. Quite frankly, with all the doom and gloom we saw last year, I am quite surprised auto sales were only down 8%. Reddit had us believing it was a high double digit decline with articles plastered on every sub every week claiming so.