For years, investors in Tesla have complained that the Californian electric-car maker is not profitable and owes its profits only to the sale of green certificates to other automakers, which in this way comply with the environmental guidelines for their fleets.

The actual business, the production and sale of electric cars, was considered to be little or not at all profitable.

Times have changed radically.

In the car industry, the American group, which has been ridiculed for many years, is now viewed with a good deal of envy.

In the past fiscal quarter (ended March), Tesla achieved an operating profit of $3.6 billion on sales of $18.8 billion.

The bottom line was an operating margin of 19.2 percent.

Compared to the previous quarter, this meant an increase of 4.5 percentage points.

This makes Tesla one of the absolute top class in the automotive industry.

According to a study by the CAR Center Automotive Research, only the sports car manufacturer Ferrari was able to beat the American car manufacturer in terms of profitability in the previous year.

According to the study, Tesla's operating profit (EBIT) in the previous year was 10,356 euros per vehicle, Ferrari came to an incredible 80,620 euros or 25.2 percent.

Ferrari's margin notwithstanding, Tesla has arguably shown it to all critics only once many industry pundits have written the group off in the past.

According to Tesla, among other things, the increased production figures have contributed to the recent improvements in earnings.

In the first quarter of 2022, Tesla produced 305,407 cars while delivering 310,048 vehicles to customers - despite global supply chain issues and some plant closures in China.

The recent price increases are also having a positive effect, while Tesla was able to reduce the costs per vehicle at the same time.

In contrast, the group of founder Elon Musk recently had to contend with higher material, raw material and logistics costs.

Apparently you seem to be able to cope with these challenges better than the competition.

Tesla wants to be the Apple of the automotive industry

Despite recent successes, Tesla is far from there.

Elon Musk has announced annual production of more than 20 million cars by 2030.

In addition, the electric car manufacturer wants to become a platform company with autonomous driving and the so-called robotaxis in the future and thus something like the Apple of the automotive industry.

Tesla's success would probably be hard to imagine without Elon Musk as a person.

In recent years, he has managed to send the company's share price skyrocketing with individual Twitter messages.

Thanks to his Tesla shares, he himself became the richest person on this planet.

While he is a blessing for the company on the one hand, he could one day become a liability.

This has already been seen in the course of his dispute with the American Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Most recently, he made headlines with his planned Twitter takeover, and to make matters worse, the news portal "Business Insider" reported earlier allegations of harassment against Musk.