I don't think that's the case; they do an accounting thing where they store the money and don't register all of it as profits until they deliver a set of benchmark features.
So some of it is recognized as profits right away because the car drives into a tree autonomously in a parking lot, or grinds the wheels against a curb when asked to self park, or when it slams on the brakes randomly when going under an overpass while the lane keeping cruise control is enabled. Each new feature allows them to claim more of that $10k as profits, but they still haven't gotten their FSD delivered out of beta so they don't get all of it.
I really like my tesla, BTW. It doesn't quite live up to the promises but it is quite lovely for everything I use it for.
If you seriously believe this I have a bridge to sell you LOL. Elon has a history of shilling FSD and FSD payments at let’s say… opportune times in history when Tesla was at risk of running out of runway.
Is it really the case? Surely the development of this software package has its own very significant expenses, considering how much effort such a thing must take. What exactly are the annual revenue from selling this package and the expenses spent on working on it?
My point was, if the company is getting $10k extra per sale but actually for example spending a total of $12k per sale, then arguing with these sales seems pointless if they're actually worsening the company's situation. At this point it seems far from certain that this is a net benefit for the company, other than perhaps as an investment in its future (but long-term investments in your future don't prop up your current profits).
> but long-term investments in your future don't prop up your current profits
This is exactly why gross profit margin typically excludes R&D, because the measure is usually used to see “is this business profitable on a per-unit basis”. That is, would you make profit if you decided to stop the long term investment.
