Credit: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images After a rocky first half of the year, Tesla enjoyed a much healthier third quarter in 2024. As we learned earlier this month, it arrested a slide in sales, delivering 6 percent more electric vehicles year over year. But the automotive side of the business was essentially flat—Tesla attributes its success to its second-best quarter ever for regulatory credits, as well as making it cheaper to build the cars it sells. Automotive revenues grew by 2 percent to $20 billion for the third quarter, less than the growth in deliveries. But Tesla's static battery and solar operations grew by 52 percent year over year, bringing in $2.4 billion. Services and other revenue-generating activities brought in another $2.8 billion, growing 29 percent compared to Q3 2023. Cutting operating expenses by 6 percent helped a lot, as did increasing income from operations, up 54 percent to $2.7 billion. Some of that income has come from the Supercharger network, though it's still mostly from Tesla drivers—so far, only a few of the OEMs that have announced a switch to the Tesla-style NACS plug have gained access to Tesla's chargers. But Tesla says part sales have been strong, and it has increased its margins at its service centers. Selling emissions credits to other automakers was almost as profitable in Q3 as it had been in the preceding three months. In total, Tesla brought in $739 million in this way. All of that helped total revenue rise by 8 percent year over year to $25.2 billion. Gross profit jumped by 20 percent to $5 billion, and once generally accepted accounting principles are applied, its net profit grew 17 percent compared to Q3 2023, at $2.2 billion. What's more, the company is sitting on a healthy treasure chest. Free cash flow increased 223 percent compared to Q3 2023 to reach $2.7 billion, and cash, cash equivalents, and investments grew 29 percent to $33.6 billion over the same time period. What comes next? The days of Tesla promising exponential growth in its car sales appear to be at an end, or at least on hiatus until it can deliver a new vehicle platform. The company says that it believes that advances in autonomy will contribute to renewed growth in the future, but these dreams may come crashing down if federal regulators order a costly hardware recall for Tesla's vision-only system. An increasingly stale product lineup is slated to grow in the first half of next year, it says. These vehicles will be based on modified versions of Tesla's existing vehicles built on existing assembly lines, albeit with some features from its "next-generation platform." Tesla says it has plenty of spare capacity at its factories in California, Texas, Germany, and China, with room to grow "before investing in new production lines." Meanwhile, the two-seat CyberCab—which Tesla CEO Elon Musk says is due "before 2027"—will use what Tesla calls a "revolutionary "unboxed" manufacturing strategy.