#RegulatoryCredits

One of Volkswagen’s joint ventures in China has reportedly offered to purchase regulatory credits from Tesla in order to adhere to the regional environmental ascendancy. While VW may be doing everything in its power to swap over to an electric-vehicle manufacturer, it’s apparently falling short of government dictums.

FAW-Volkswagen — which shipped a little over 2 million automobiles in Asia last year — happened to be one of the biggest polluters of 2020 according to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. As it turns out, selling internal combustion vehicles consumers actually want to purchase in large quantities has some kind of environmental cost. Fortunately, it’s one regulators think can be solved by buying green credits from rivals who do all of their polluting during the initial assembly process and launder any future emissions through the national energy grid.

Tesla’s Q3 2014 earnings report had a few pluses (record deliveries of the Model S, high demand for the D trim sedans) and minuses (the third delay of the Model X, removal of brown and green from the Model S palette). The biggest minus, however, was its bottom line: A net loss of $75 million in GAAP income.