A Tesla electric vehicle at a supercharger station in Hawthorne, California, on Aug. 9, 2022.
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call on Wednesday evening that the company expects to fully meet the Inflation Reduction Act requirements that would allow consumers to receive tax credits on new EV purchases.
President Joe Biden signed the bill in August after it was passed by both chambers of Congress. It includes climate-related incentives, like an up to $7,500 tax credit for consumers who purchase an electric vehicle. To be eligible for the credit, the car’s battery must meet a minimum threshold of parts sourced from the U.S. or countries with which it has a free trade agreement.
The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, a more than $430 billion health, tax and climate package, is “a significant boost towards accelerating our mission,” Tesla CFO Zachary Kirkhorn told analysts during the company’s Q3 earnings call.
Kirkhorn added that it would also result in “scaling the battery supply chain at large in the United States,” though he said the eligibility criteria for the credit won’t be fully clear until the Treasury Department publishes guidance, likely by the end of the year.
“We believe Tesla is very well positioned to capture a significant share of that for solar storage and also electric vehicles,” Kirkhorn said.
Shares of Tesla were down more than 3% in morning trading Thursday after the company fell short of analysts’ revenue expectations for the quarter. The stock hit a 52-week low earlier in the day.
“We’re going to go basically pedals to metal as fast as humanly possible to get to 1,000 gigawatt hours a year of production in the U.S. vertically integrated,” Musk said.
Correction: Tesla’s third-quarter earnings call was on Wednesday evening. An earlier version misstated the day.
