"Tesla has over the years been the biggest beneficiary of EV tax credits like the one in Biden’s IRA legislation, along with similar credits that preceded it. And yet it now may stand to gain from killing the subsidy because that could hurt rising EV competitors more than Tesla."
That's quite some wishful thinking here. EV competition is loosing money anyway on their EV cars, but it's funded by their much bigger traditional ICE vehicles business anyway. So yes, it may hurt them more on that part of the business, but this part is rather small for them.
In other countries that killed subsides for EVs, sales plummeted. And the incentives where much lower than in the US.
EDIT: Forgot to add - Tesla is not making a lot of money on their cars btw. If they are forced to cut prices even a tiny bit to keep the sales, it will wipe out most of the margin they have. Put another way, if all subsides for EVs on federal and state level go away (which is not currently planned of course), Tesla is out of business within 2 years.
Could you elaborate on the plummeting? I remember that that happened in Denmark, but when I googled now, it seems EV sales started growing again almost at once and are now at about 57% of the market. Do you know some countries where EV sales plummeted and then stayed low?
NZ and Germany comes to mind - both eliminated / cut subsides end of 2023.
In NZ electric car sales went from 19% (of total car sales) in 2023 to ~7% in 2024 https://evdb.nz/ev-stats
In Germany it's quite similar: https://eu-evs.com/brandCharts/TESLA/DE/YoY-Chart
JFYI that NZ graph looks like Denmark at the time: Slow groth, then high EV sales in the final few months of the subsidy, when people know the subsidies were to be discontinued, then very low sales in the first months after the end of the subsidy. I guess we'll see whether the trend resumes in a year or two.
I'd guess the same would happen in Germany, the Germans love taking advantage of a subsidy when it's about to end, but I've no idea whether Tesla's like the general market.
China wins.