Tesla boss Elon Musk has admitted that making money from selling electric cars is tough. But in the past few years Tesla has made millions by getting rival car firms to pay it for a surprisingly valuable commodity: nothing. 

In the US, several states require car firms to produce a certain number of zero-emission cars, or face fines. But firms can buy EV ‘credits’ from other car makers, and because Tesla only makes electric cars, it has a huge number of those credits. In one financial quarter last year it made more than $190 million (£164 million) – more than two-thirds of its profit in that quarter – selling such credits to rivals.

Tesla has now found a way to turn nothing into profit with its European arm, through a new deal with the FCA Group, which owns Alfa Romeo, Fiat, Jeep and Maserati. In this case, the ‘nothing’ FCA is paying “hundreds of millions” of pounds to access is the 0g/km of CO2 emitted by Tesla’s EVs.