yes it is objectively shady because it appears they have full discretion to decide when to recognize these credits, and also unclear who is actually buying them.
they also don’t have credits listed as an asset on their balance sheet when you’d otherwise expect these credits to go from asset -> revenue when they decide they should be recognized, instead it is as if these credits just appear out of thin air and sold.
Again, they are not required to report that so there is no reason to. I'm sure they have squirreled away lots of these credits in their war chest to break out at opportune times (like today). They're not fabricating the numbers, they are audited and exist. There's nothing illegal about it. They just don't have to disclose them publicly so they don't, because it would needlessly give information to competitors.
If Tesla own something that's worth money, they generally are required to disclose that publicly. They need to include it on their balance sheet and send that to the SEC quarterly in their 10-Q or 10-K filing. That's the main requirement of being a public company.
Tesla's accountants know this and follow the SEC rules, even if Musk doesn't. Is there some special treatment for these tax credits? Are they rolling this credit in with something else? Otherwise I don't believe they can be "squirreled away" to make the numbers look good "at opportune times".
i cannot find any information from a Ford or Toyota or GM describing the millions of credits they’ve purchased from Tesla shrug