Musk has claimed that Tesla will start letting people hail self-driving Teslas in Texas and California later this year, and Bloomberg recently reported that the company has been talking with city officials in Austin and across Texas about launching such a service. California is a more restrictive place to try to launch a robotaxi service. Companies like Waymo, which operates the only commercial robotaxi fleet in the U.S. at the moment, started with test vehicles and then ramped up to autonomous drives with safety operators, before removing humans from the driver’s seat. Texas, which loves Musk, seems more likely to let Tesla take riskier shortcuts on the path to achieving Musk’s dream. Looking back Those big ideas won’t change the company’s bottom line for 2024, though, which was looking iffy prior to the final quarter. The company reported $25.2 billion in sales during the third quarter of 2024 and a $2.2 billion profit — nearly flat compared to the same quarter in 2023. How close will the fourth quarter compare to the prior year’s? On a year-over basis, Tesla generated $25.17 billion revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023 and reported a net income (on a GAAP basis) of $7.9 billion in the fourth quarter. This was an unusually outsized figure that included a one-time non-cash tax benefit of $5.9 billion for the release of valuation allowance on certain deferred tax assets. The company’s operating income and its earnings on an adjusted basis, which was $2.06 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, provided a clearer picture of its financial performance. The company also continued to turn other automakers’ hesitancy to transition to full-electric lineups into free money throughout 2024, though there is some question as to how reliable that income stream will remain. Tesla booked $739 million worth of sales of regulatory credits (which other companies buy to make up for their vehicle fleet emissions) in the third quarter last year, a huge amount second only to the previous quarter when the company sold credits totaling $890 million. As is the case with so much of the Musk-Trump relationship, though, Tesla’s ambitions seem to clash with the new administration’s policies. Trump has said he wants to try to revoke California’s waiver that allows it to set its own emissions rules, which could nuke this source of free money Tesla has often relied on to stay profitable. This comes as Trump is already targeting a number of funding programs for EV charging that Tesla benefits from. Topics