Tesla

A buyer pays Tesla about $41,900 per car on average, by our calculation from Q3 car sales revenue and non-leased deliveries. That includes FSD and other add-ons. Building the car cost about $34,500, Tesla's own cost-per-vehicle measure, so Tesla keeps roughly $7,300, or about 18%, before research, sales and administration.

Running costs now outrun that. Operating expenses were $4.78B in Q3, about $9,800 per car delivered, and research alone was about $5,700 per car, mostly for AI. Services and grid batteries close the gap: together they made $1.69B of gross profit, which is why Tesla still showed an operating profit of $718M.

Two items flattered the quarter. Refunds of tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court cut car costs by $260M, about $540 per car, and energy costs by $526M. Regulatory credits, which other carmakers buy from Tesla to meet emissions rules, fell to $113M from $417M a year earlier as new U.S. laws restricted those programs, and that is after Tesla reversed $475M for credits buyers returned.^26,36,35

Megapack is a shipping-container-sized battery that utilities, power producers and now data centers use to store power and smooth demand. Through nine months Tesla deployed 36.0 GWh and booked $8.43B of energy revenue, about $234 per kWh by our calculation, at a 30% gross margin. Cars earned about 18%.

Demand is ahead of supply. Tesla holds $10.73B of contracted energy revenue on longer contracts, $4.80B of it due within a year, plus $3.30B of customer prepayments. Musk said Megapacks are almost sold out for 2027. SpaceX, which now owns xAI, is a customer, with $626M of purchases this year.

Cells are the catch. Tesla relies on suppliers such as Panasonic and China's CATL for battery cells, says U.S. tariffs hit energy harder than cars, and says battery supply limits car output. Its answer is making its own: a 7 GWh LFP cell line in Nevada shipped the first all-Tesla-cell Megapacks, and Megafactory Texas started with 50 GWh of planned capacity.

Rivals are smaller. Fluence, which sells grid batteries built from other companies' cells, now expects about $2.4B of revenue for its whole fiscal year, less than Tesla's energy revenue in Q3 alone. Fluence blamed delays at its U.S. contract factory.^{26,36,35,39,40,49}

Tesla discloses very little. Its Q3 report gives one robotaxi number: nearly 2 million cumulative unsupervised miles, up eightfold in a quarter. On the call, managers said the service runs in six U.S. metros and that the Austin Cybercab fleet grew about tenfold in its first month. They gave no fleet size, ride count, fare or revenue.

Outside counts fill the gap. A crowdsourced tracker cited by Electrek counts 397 driverless Teslas in Austin, more than half of them Cybercabs, and 34 in Houston. In the Bay Area, California still requires a safety driver in every car. Barclays estimates the fleet was driving about 560,000 unsupervised miles a week by mid-October.

Waymo is the yardstick. Alphabet reported more than 500,000 paid Waymo rides a week in April, from a fleet of over 3,000 cars, and Waymo raised money in February at a $126B valuation. Tesla's weekly miles are about the same number as Waymo's weekly rides, so Waymo still carries far more passengers.

The money is further out. The finance chief said cost per paid mile is still above Tesla's 30-cent target, and Musk said robotaxi revenue should become noticeable around the second quarter of 2027. Unsupervised driving in customers' own cars has slipped to the same quarter, and only inside robotaxi zones.^{26,39,40,44,45,43,46,47}

Musk's 2025 award covers about 423.7M shares in 12 tranches. Each needs a market value milestone, from $2T up to $8.5T, plus one operational goal, such as 1 million robotaxis in service, 1 million robots delivered, 10 million FSD subscriptions or $50B of adjusted EBITDA (profit before interest, tax, depreciation and stock pay). None has been earned yet.

The proxy contains a clause that matters now. In a change in control of Tesla, the award vests based solely on market value milestones measured at that time. On October 20 Musk said Tesla and SpaceX had formed board committees of independent directors to study a merger. SpaceX was worth about $2.1T and Tesla about $1.5T.

The two are already tied. Tesla invested $2B in SpaceX stock in March, under 1% of the company, after SpaceX absorbed xAI. SpaceX bought $626M of Megapacks this year, and Musk owns 19.8% of Tesla. A merger would need more than half of all Tesla shares outstanding to vote yes.

Barclays upgraded the stock on deal hopes, seeing $450 a share at a 20% premium. By our math, on 3.95B shares that values Tesla near $1.8T, below the first $2T tranche. A bigger premium would start paying Musk without any robotaxi or robot target being met.^{37,36,41,42,43}

Tesla trades at 13 times the sales analysts expect over the next 12 months. That ratio is the multiple: what investors pay today for each dollar of a year's sales. That is pricier than it has been 80% of the time over the past five years, when the middle was 8.6.

Analysts expect sales to grow about 18% the year after.

FSD (Supervised) steers, brakes and changes lanes, but a driver must watch the road. About 1.74M customers pay for it, and half are now on monthly subscriptions. On the Q3 call the finance chief agreed with an analyst's estimate of about $1B in annual recurring revenue.

Sign-ups are rising fast. Over 75% of North American buyers signed up at delivery in Q3, about 20 points more than in Q2. Each delivery includes a free first month, so the number that matters is how many keep paying after it, and Tesla doesn't disclose that.

Set against the business, $1B a year is about 1% of the last four quarters' $103.6B of revenue, and about a third of one quarter's $2.76B research budget. Musk's pay award needs 10 million active subscriptions, nearly six times today's count.^26,39,40,37