Tesla did a great deal to make electric cars normal, and it also earns money when other carmakers miss their emissions limits: US$1.99 billion from regulatory credits in 2025.
Tesla joined the S&P 500 in December 2020 and was its tenth-largest holding in early October 2026, so if your super has an international shares allocation that follows the big indexes, you own some. This page sets out both sides so that owning it is a choice.
Tesla is the company most people point at when they want an example of a business that did something about emissions. It is also a company that booked about US$2 billion in 2025 by selling credits to carmakers that were over their emissions limits.
the company
Tesla, Inc. is led by chief executive Elon Musk and headquartered in Austin, Texas. In 2025 Tesla reported total revenue of US$94.8 billion and delivered 1.64 million vehicles, down from US$97.7 billion and 1.79 million in 2024.
That is fewer cars than Toyota sells in an average quarter: Toyota’s results for 2025 show 10.5 million Toyota and Lexus vehicles sold. Yet on 5 October 2026 CompaniesMarketCap put Tesla’s market value at about US$1.5 trillion, more than Toyota, Volkswagen, GM, Ford, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai and Stellantis combined.
the good stuff
Tesla made electric cars something people wanted. It began shipping the Model S in June 2012 and had delivered 8.9 million vehicles by the end of 2025. Its annual report says all major carmakers have announced they will adopt its charging connector, known as NACS, in certain markets.
The Supercharger network had 77,682 connectors at the end of 2025, and Tesla deployed 46.7 GWh of energy storage that year, up 49%. The Hornsdale Power Reserve in South Australia, a battery Tesla supplied, cut the cost of frequency control in the national electricity market by about A$116 million in 2019, on Aurecon’s modelling.
Tesla’s 2025 Impact Report says its customers avoided nearly 37 million tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions that year. The ICCT’s 2021 life-cycle study found medium-size battery electric cars emit 60% to 68% less than comparable petrol cars in the United States over their lifetime.
hold on to this one
the part worth keeping in mind
Nearly everything on this page that is awkward comes out of the same thing that makes Tesla matter: it built the battery car at scale before anyone else would. Scale is what puts a mine in the Atacama, a factory in Fremont and a credit line in the accounts.
the lithium paradox
Every Tesla battery needs lithium. Tesla’s 2025 Impact Report lists two lithium suppliers in Chile, Albemarle and the former SQM Salar, the two companies that extract lithium brine from the Salar de Atacama. Estimates of the water that takes run from about 400 litres a kilogram, in a 2022 Royal Society study, to the almost 2,000 litres cited in 2020 by UNCTAD, the UN’s trade body. UNCTAD said lithium and other mining used 65% of the water there and forced local communities to abandon ancestral settlements. The Royal Society study found mining was negatively correlated with the numbers of two of the Salar’s three flamingo species.
Tesla says its suppliers in the region conform to the IRMA mining standard and that, after complaints of excessive water use, it worked with them so their use “stayed within legal limits”.
In 2016 Amnesty International documented children as young as seven working in artisanal cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Tesla buys cobalt from two Glencore operations there and says external audits “to date have not identified the use of child labor”. Its Megapack and Powerwall use lithium iron phosphate cells, which need no cobalt or nickel, but its supplier list still names nickel refiners in Indonesia, where Climate Rights International reported in 2024 at least 5,331 hectares of tropical forest cut inside nickel mining concessions on the island of Halmahera. Tesla says it requires the nickel mines that supply it in Indonesia to replant cleared land.
the autopilot question
For the first quarter of 2024 Tesla reported one crash for every 7.63 million miles driven with Autopilot in use, against a US average of one every 670,000 miles. Its 2025 Impact Report says Full Self-Driving (Supervised) features “require active driver supervision and do not make the vehicle autonomous”.
Tesla’s recall filing says Autosteer is designed for controlled-access highways unless its city-streets feature is on, while the US average covers every kind of road. And NHTSA said in April 2024 that gaps in Tesla’s data “create uncertainty regarding the actual rate at which vehicles operating with Autopilot engaged are involved in crashes”. Tesla mostly learns of crashes in which an airbag fires, which NHTSA’s data put at 18% of police-reported crashes.
In December 2023 Tesla recalled 2.03 million US vehicles by software update. The filing says Autosteer’s controls “may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse”, and that Tesla did not agree with NHTSA’s analysis. NHTSA identified at least 13 fatal crashes in which misuse played an apparent role, and its inquiry into whether the fix was enough was still open in October 2026.
On 16 December 2025 California’s Department of Motor Vehicles ruled that Tesla’s use of the names “Autopilot” and “Full Self-Driving Capability” was misleading and broke state law. It held back a 30-day suspension of Tesla’s sales licence, and on 17 February 2026 said Tesla had stopped using “Autopilot” in its California marketing and would avoid it. Tesla sued that month to have the ruling reversed.
the factory and the workforce
In April 2018 Reveal found Tesla had left some serious injuries at its Fremont factory off the injury logs the law requires. Tesla said it records injuries accurately, and later added 13 injuries from 2017 to its logs. Its 2025 Impact Report says no Tesla employee in the US is covered by a collective bargaining agreement and that its staff “see no need to unionize”.
The US National Labor Relations Board found Tesla had unlawfully fired a union supporter and that a 2018 tweet by Elon Musk was an unlawful threat. In October 2024 the full Fifth Circuit appeals court threw out the Board’s order and sent the firing back to the Board, whose docket still showed the case open in July 2026. The same court overturned a separate Board ruling on union shirts in November 2023.
In April 2023 a federal jury in San Francisco awarded US$3.2 million to Owen Diaz, a Black former worker at Fremont, over racial harassment. A first jury had awarded US$137 million in 2021, which the judge cut to US$15 million, and the two sides settled in March 2024 on confidential terms. In February 2022 California’s civil rights agency sued Tesla in Alameda County Superior Court, alleging Black workers faced racial slurs and discrimination in pay and promotion. Tesla denies wrongdoing, and the case was set for trial before a judge from 21 September 2026.
the carbon credit business
Tesla’s accounts call them regulatory credits. It earns them under government regulations and sells them to other carmakers, which use them to comply. Bloomberg News counted almost US$9 billion of revenue from them between 2009 and the end of 2023. Tesla’s annual report adds US$2.76 billion for 2024 and US$1.99 billion for 2025.
The buyers are carmakers whose new fleets are over their emissions limits, so the revenue depends on rivals falling short. Fiat Chrysler, now part of Stellantis, spent about €2 billion on Tesla’s credits between 2019 and 2021, Reuters reported. Under EU rules carmakers can “act jointly to meet their emissions target”, so a buyer can meet its target through the pool. Tesla’s credit revenue fell 28% in 2025, and its annual report says government actions have “restricted certain regulatory credit programs”.
what this means for your money
Tesla was added to the S&P 500 in December 2020 and on 2 October 2026 was its tenth-largest holding, at 1.57%, on State Street’s figures. If your super has an international shares allocation that follows the big indexes, you own some Tesla.
So your retirement savings may hold a company that helped make electric cars normal, earns money when other carmakers miss their emissions limits, and had a race discrimination case set for trial in September 2026. Its own annual report lists its dependence on Elon Musk as a risk, noting that he “does not devote his full time and attention to Tesla”.
Tesla shares fell 65% in 2022 and rose 102% in 2023, on Yahoo Finance’s price history (year-end closes of US$352.26, US$123.18 and US$248.48). Tesla’s annual report says its share price “has been highly volatile” and that public perception of the company or its management can move it “regardless of actual operating performance”. In other words, this is not a stock priced on fundamentals alone. Knowing what you own, and what the asterisk on it is, is the point of this page.
inaam holds itself to the same reading. Every company in the fund is named in the app, with the reason it got in and the trade-off written next to it. The three checks a company has to pass are set out on how it works, and the five themes members customise for themselves are on investment areas. The subscription is $10 a month, which is $120 a year, and it is separate from the money you invest. The minimum to invest in the fund is $100. Sign-up happens in the app, not on this website. SMSFs and family trusts are welcome.
key sources
Tesla 2025 annual report · Tesla Q4 and FY 2025 update · Tesla 2025 Impact Report · NHTSA · California DMV · California Civil Rights Department · US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit · Amnesty International · Climate Rights International
General information only. It does not take your objectives or circumstances into account. Consider the PDS and TMD, and we recommend independent advice, before investing. This article is general information only and does not constitute financial advice. All investments carry risk. Readers should do their own research before making investment decisions. The inaam Impact Investments Fund is ARSN 691 614 132. inaam is not affiliated with Tesla, Inc. or any entity discussed in this report.
