What does the end of the $7,500 federal tax credit mean for Tesla’s finances?
Analyst Troy Teslike estimates what will happen to Tesla’s top and bottom lines in several different scenarios.
When the $7,500 federal EV tax credit ends in September, Tesla will have some tough decisions to make, having to choose between denting sales or its bottom line. Now we have an idea of just how damaging that could be.
An analyst who goes by the name Troy Teslike recently modeled what Tesla’s finances for Q4 — the first quarter without the credit — might look like, depending on whether or how much Tesla lowers its prices.
If Tesla keeps prices as they are without the discount, effectively raising the price for buyers by $7,500 (scenario No. 1), he says Tesla could see its US sales plunge 37%, but the company’s gross margins would fall only to 13% and its earnings per share to $0.16 (down from 15% and $0.33 in Q2 2025, respectively).
The other end of the spectrum (scenario No. 8) would be if Tesla ate the $7,500 credit, keeping prices the same for consumers. In that case, Teslike estimates that deliveries wouldn’t drop, but the company’s margins and earnings would decline substantially to 8.1% and $0.03, respectively — barely a profit at all.
Teslike suspects the EV company will probably pick somewhere in the middle and cut the price for consumers by about $2,500.
Here’s what each of those scenarios would look like:
