Even from the headline, your article states they were profitable in 2020. Yes, back then a lot of it was due carbon credits. So they priced things according to the market they were in?

Are you complaining that GM for example was only profitable because of those credits? They (and other legacy manufacturers) decided it was more profitable for them to buy carbon credits from Tesla than to develop their own EVs. You could argue they were only profitable because they could buy pollution rights from Tesla.

But of course that’s old news. Profits ebb and flow but Tesla has more recently been profitable even not counting those credits.

Regardless the market has changed and those pollution credits no longer exist. It’s a different world for both EV manufacturers and legacy manufacturers, so we’ll see what happens. Pollution is free again, although of course the picture is complicated by trade wars, fascism and musk s reputation, as well as the meteoric rise of competitors in China