Tesla was very profitable. Gross Margin is 14% now of revenue now. 1/4 of their their $8B profit is emissions credits. That's not shabby and they have lowish debt ($20B).

But it isn't what I'd call insane. Google's gross margin is 58%, profit is $349B.

I'm not sure why you're comparing the gross margin of a car company to an internet company. General Motors has a gross margin of 10%. Ford's is 7%. Historically Tesla's was ~25%, but yeah it's fallen a bit since I last looked.

> I'm not sure why you're comparing the gross margin of a car company to an internet company.

Because the benchmark set was "insane". I agree no car company gets insane profitability levels. Tesla was never insanely profitable by most metrics.

SpaceX is not insanely profitable. Starlink might become so, but it isn't yet.

Only because they're funneling every dollar they earn into Starship. But as Starship contributes absolutely nothing to current revenue, excluding those costs is the only fair apples-to-apples comparison. We don't know their exact costs because SpaceX is still a private company, but estimates are on the order of 60% profit margin across their business lines.