I think stories like this lend support to the idea that Tesla would not dump all the credits for $100 or $250. They have the inside track on the lobbying efforts and the likelihood of the mandate getting stricter or weaker, and they are taking this into consideration when negotiating to sell them.
Put yourself in Tesla's shoes in August 2016. They are sitting on 63,000 credits and the ZEV credit market has crashed to 175 as some believe (midpoint of 2 recent pessimistic guesses), or $11 million. Standard price is 3500 pre-crash (and a possibility for it to go even higher if mandate is made more difficult). What Tesla would do in August, if it's a rational decisionmaker, is place expected values on various outcomes to determine if they want to sell now or wait and see. Keep in mind they have the best information re: which way the wind is blowing because they are involved in the negotiations and there is now public info about the mandate maybe being made stricter, so Tesla probably knew this for quite some time. Let's throw out random numbers and calculate expected value:
20% chance price goes down to 50 because mandate is further weakened: .2*50*63000 = 630,000
40% chance mandate stays the same and market remains 175: .4*175*63000 = 4,410,000
30% chance mandate is tightened/returned to normal 3500: .3*3500*63000 = 66,150,000
10% chance mandate is tightened as suggested in latest article, market is high end at 4000: .1*4000*63000 = 25,200,000
Expected value of waiting to sell: $96,390,000. Value of being risk averse and selling now @175: $11,025,000. Under these circumstances, Tesla DEFINITELY would have held on the credits as opposed to selling them. So, let's try more pessimistic scenarios:
50% chance price goes to 0: 0
30% chance stays at 175: 3,307,500
20% chance back to 3500: 44,100,000
EV = $47,407,500. Still FAR in excess of the guaranteed $11,025,000 from selling immediately, so a rational negotiator sits on the credits at this price. How bad does the expectation have to be to induce immediate selling?
90% chance goes to 0: 0
6% chance stays at 175: 661,500
4% chance back to 3500: 8,820,000
EV of under $10 million, which is worse than $11,025,000 guaranteed. There you go, in that scenario you sell the credits now - when you expect a less than 5% chance of the old ZEV market coming back. I'm not saying this isn't possible - maybe they did truly think the market was over 90% screwed even as they negotiated for better standards and final decisions had not been made - but I'm saying the probability greatly favors sitting on the credits instead of selling as they did if the market had truly crashed to 175.
Before you tell me this is all hocus pocus, I just want to note that this is
exactly how litigators approach court cases and deciding whether to go to trial or settle out of court. They tally up the EV of each potential settlement amount, probability of winning in court, possibility of losing big, etc. - then assess appetite for risk and make an informed decision. I'd expect Tesla to make similar careful choices when dealing with the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars.
