Tesla's sales last quarter were 24.5k cars, hardly "barely 15,000". Q4 is expected to meet or exceed that, despite being a shorter quarter.
If you pick the biggest car manufacturer in the world to compare them to, then of course they're going to look small. There are plenty of well-established, profitable car manufacturers that build far fewer cars than Toyota.
I don't want to argue semantics, so I'll leave it open for debate as to whether or not they're "at scale", but comparing them to a startup that hasn't figured out how to turn a profit yet seems highly disingenuous.
> They've been "profitable" for a single quarter by selling Tesla's at a deep discount.
If they can sell cars at a deep discount and still be profitable, then clearly the margins must be pretty good.