According to the United States (US) Treasury Department, more auto dealers are signing up for the point-of-sale electric vehicle tax credit.
In November 2023, the US Treasury announced that car dealers would receive direct tax credit payments, enabling them to offer customers immediate rebates at the point of sale. The Biden administration believes the initiative will help car dealers grow their business.
“Starting January 1, 2024, consumers will be able to choose to transfer their new clean vehicle credit of up to $7,500 and their previously owned clean vehicle credit of up to $4,000 to a registered car dealer. This provision of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) will effectively lower the vehicle’s purchase price by providing consumers with an upfront down payment on their clean vehicle at the point of sale rather than having to wait to claim their credit on their tax return the next year. Only vehicles purchased under the consumer clean vehicle credits are eligible for this benefit,” announced the US Department of Treasury.
In early December 2023, around 7,000 auto dealers signed up for the point-of-sale electric vehicle tax credit. Before the end of December 2023, 400 more dealerships signed up, increasing the number to 7,400. More than 1,000 auto dealers signed up for the initiative after it took effect on January 1, 2024. By Friday, January 5, 2024, the US Treasury reported over 8,700 dealers joined the point-of-sale electric vehicle tax credit initiative, reported The Hill.
The US Treasury and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) opened the IRS Energy Credits Online (ECO) portal to help dealerships implement the immediate rebate initiative and receive direct tax credit payments faster. Auto dealers will have a deadline of three days from the time of sale to submit a time-of-sale report. As of this writing, however, the IRS has extended the deadline for time-of-sale reports until January 16, 2024, to allow dealers to get used to the IRS ECO portal.
Interestingly enough, around the same time, the Biden administration rolled out its direct tax credit payments plan to auto dealers, over 3,000 dealerships signed a letter addressed to President Biden telling him that “enthusiasm has stalled” for electric vehicles.
“Last year, there was a lot of hope and hype about EVs. Early adopters formed an initial line and were ready to buy these vehicles as soon as we had them to sell. But that enthusiasm has stalled. Today, the supply of unsold BEVs is surging, as they are not selling nearly as fast as they are arriving at our dealerships — even with deep price cuts, manufacturer incentives, and generous government incentives,” said the letter.
Despite the letter’s words, auto dealers still seem willing to sell electric vehicles. The direct tax credit payments plan appears to have swayed some dealerships to keep selling electric cars, as it does address one of the main consumer concerns mentioned in the letter. In the letter to President Biden, dealerships claimed consumers thought EVs were not affordable.
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Elon Musk
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford CEO Jim Farley said in a recent podcast interview that Tesla is not who Americans should look at to beat Chinese carmakers.
The comments have sparked quite a bit of outrage from Tesla fans on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk.
Farley said that Chinese automakers are better examples of how to beat competitors. He said (via the Rapid Response Podcast):
“If you’re an American and you want us to beat the Chinese in the car business, you’re all going to want to pay attention, not necessarily to Tesla. Nothing against Tesla—they’ve been doing great—but they really don’t have an updated vehicle. The best in the business for us, cost-wise and competition-wise, supply chain, manufacturing expertise, and the I.P. in the vehicle, was really BYD. In this next cycle of EV customers in the U.S., they want pickups and utilities and all these different body styles. But they want them at $30,000, not $50,000. Like the first inning, they want them affordably.”
Despite Farley’s synopsis, it is worth mentioning that Tesla had the best-selling passenger vehicle in the world last year, and in China in March, as the Model Y continued its global dominance over other vehicles.
Musk responded to Farley’s comments by stating:
“This is before Supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.”
This is before supervised FSD is approved in China. Limiting factor is production output in Shanghai.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 19, 2026
Interestingly, Farley has been one of the most hellbent CEOs in terms of a legacy automaker standpoint to push the EV effort. It did not go according to plan, as Ford took a $19.5 billion charge and retreated from its EV push in late 2025.
Ford cancels all-electric F-150 Lightning, announces $19.5 billion in charges
Instead, Ford is “doubling down on its affordable” EVs and said it would pivot from its previous plans.
Reaction from Tesla fans was pretty much how you would expect. Many said they have lost a lot of respect for Farley after his comments; others believe he is the last CEO anyone should be taking advice on EVs from.
Nevertheless, Farley’s plans are bold and brash; many consider Tesla the most ideal company to replicate EV efforts from. It will be interesting to see if Ford can rebound from this big adjustment, and hopefully, Farley’s plans to replicate efforts from BYD work out the way he hopes.
Elon Musk
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
NASA awarded SpaceX a $175 million Mars rover contract while the White House proposes cutting the mission.
NASA just signed a $175.7 million contract with SpaceX to launch a Mars rover that the White House is simultaneously trying to defund. The contract, awarded on April 16, 2026, tasks SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy with launching the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Rosalind Franklin rover from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, no earlier than late 2028. It would mark the first time SpaceX has ever sent a payload to Mars.
Under NASA’s Rosalind Franklin Support and Augmentation project, known as ROSA, the agency is providing braking engines for the rover’s descent stage, radioisotope heater units that use decaying plutonium to keep the rover warm on the Martian surface, additional electronics, and a mass spectrometer instrument, as noted by SpaceNews.
Those nuclear heating units are the reason an American rocket was required at all. U.S. export controls on radioisotope technology mean any payload carrying them must launch on a domestic vehicle, which narrowed the field to SpaceX and United Launch Alliance. Falcon Heavy’s pricing made it the practical choice.
SpaceX is quietly becoming the U.S. Military’s only reliable rocket
Falcon Heavy debuted in February 2018 and has 11 launches to its record. The rocket has not flown since October 2024, when it sent NASA’s Europa Clipper toward Jupiter. The three-core design, built from modified Falcon 9 first stages, gives it the lift capacity needed for deep space planetary missions that a single Falcon 9 cannot reach.
The Rosalind Franklin rover has been sitting in storage in Europe for years. It was originally due to launch in 2022 as a joint mission with Russia, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ended that partnership, leaving the rover built but stranded without a launch vehicle or landing hardware. NASA stepped back in through a 2024 agreement with ESA to rescue the mission. The rover is designed to drill up to two meters below the Martian surface in search of evidence of past life, a science objective no previous mission has attempted at that depth.
The contradiction at the center of this story is hard to ignore. The White House’s fiscal year 2027 budget proposal included no funding for ROSA and did not mention the mission at all in the detailed congressional justification document released April 3.
Musk has long argued that reaching Mars is not optional. “We don’t want to be one of those single planet species, we want to be a multi-planet species.” Whether this particular mission survives Washington’s budget fight, the Falcon Heavy contract means SpaceX is now formally on record as the rocket that could get humanity’s next Mars science mission off the ground.
The timing of this contract carries extra weight given that SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC in early April and is targeting an IPO roadshow in the week of June 8. It would be the largest public offering in history.
Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) is set to hold its Earnings Call for the first quarter of 2026 on Wednesday, and there are a lot of interesting things that are swirling around in terms of speculation from investors.
With the company’s executives, including CEO Elon Musk, answering a handful of questions that investors submit through the Say platform, fans want to know a lot of things about a lot of things.
These five questions come from Retail Investors, who are normal, everyday shareholders:
- When will we have the Optimus v3 reveal? When will Optimus production start, since we ended the Model S and Model X production earlier than mid-year? What’s the expected Optimus production rate exiting this year? What are the initial targeted skills?
- What milestones are you targeting for unsupervised FSD and Robotaxi expansion beyond Austin this year, and how will that drive recurring revenue?
- How will Hardware 3 cars reach Unsupervised Full Self-Driving?
- When do you expect Unsupervised Full Self-Driving to reach customer cars?
- When will Robotaxi expand past its current limited rollout?
Additionally, these are currently the three questions that are slated to be answered by Institutional Firms, which also answer a handful of questions during the call:
- Now that FSD has been approved in the Netherlands and is expected to launch across Europe this summer, can you discuss your Robotaxi strategy for the region?
- What enabled you to finish the AI5 tapeout early and were there any changes to the original vision? Last week, Elon said AI5 will go into Optimus and the Supercomputer, but one month ago said it would go into the Robotaxi. Has AI5 been dropped from the vehicle roadmap?
- Given the recent NHTSA incident filings, can you update us on the Robotaxi safety data? If safety validation remains the primary bottleneck, why not deploy thousands of vehicles to accelerate the removal of the safety driver?
The questions range through every current Tesla project, including FSD expansion and Optimus. However, many of the answers we will get will likely be repetitive answers we’ve heard in the past.
This is especially pertinent when the questions about when Unsupervised FSD will reach customer cars: we know Musk will say that it will happen this year. Is Tesla capable of that? Maybe. But a more transparent answer that is more revealing of a true timeline would be appreciated.
Hardware 3 owners are anxiously awaiting the arrival of FSD v14 Lite, which was promised to them last year for a release sometime this year.
The Earnings Call is set to take place on Wednesday at market close.
Ford CEO Farley says Tesla is not who to look at for EV expertise
SpaceX wins its first MARS contract but it comes with a catch
