Tesla sees first ever quarterly profit

here's a yahoo scribble...

http://autos.yahoo.com/blogs/motoramic/tesla-reveals-first-profit-while-curbing-lowest-range-050458491.html

In a surprise announcement late Sunday, Tesla Motors says it turned a profit for the first quarter of 2013, delivering more than 4,750 all-electric Model S sedans and beating its own forecasts. It's a major milestone for the start-up automaker, which also revealed a few last-minute Easter eggs for those waiting for their cars to be delivered — and a play to improve the value of its cars when those owners decide to sell.

Tesla had said it expected to break even on a cash basis this quarter during the ramp-up of Model S output at the factory in Fremont, Calif., with a goal of delivering 4,500 cars to owners. Since Tesla doesn't sell its cars through dealers and puts the key fob of the Model S directly in an owner's hand, it can't count the money from sold vehicles until that swap; traditional automakers mark a car as sold for accounting purposes when it leaves the factory.

"Tesla is here to stay and keep fighting for the electric car revolution,” said Elon Musk, Tesla Motors co-founder and CEO in a statement. “I would also like to thank our customers for their passionate support of the company and the car. Without them, we would not be here.”

Given the history of fledgling automakers — none of which have survived in the United States since the early 20th century — and the carnage among electric vehicle makers such as Fisker Motors, many investors have bet against Tesla, with some $1.2 billion in its shares held by short sellers anticipating its decline. Musk has aggressively fought any perceived attack on the company's image, notably launching a media war with The New York Times after one of its writers was left stranded by a Model S that ran out of charge.

That writer was testing one of Tesla's other projects, what it calls the Supercharger network of free quick-recharging stations meant to make the Model S a long-range cruiser. Using the stations requires a Tesla-specific high-voltage connector that was standard on the $72,400 Model S with an 85 kWh battery, but a $2,000 option on the shorter-range 60 kWh version. Tesla revealed tonight that buyers of the 60 kWh Model S would get the Supercharger connector for free, which it called a bet that the Superchargers will lure more customers to the company's cars.

But Tesla also revealed it was eliminating the lowest-cost planned variant of the Model S, the 40-kWh edition that had been slated to cost $52,400, or $10,000 less than the 60 kWh model. Tesla says only 4 percent of its customers had placed reservations for the 40 kWh car, which had an advertised range of 160 miles. Those customers who signed up for a 40 kWh car will get a 60 kWh car instead — but one whose software will only allow the car to access 40 kWh of energy.

Future owners — including those who buy such a capped Model S second-hand — can pay Tesla that $10,000 difference to have the software reset to use all 60 kWh of battery energy. Musk may still rank as a neophyte automaker, and Tesla's first profitable quarter doesn't solve all of its challenges, but discovering an income stream from people who buy its vehicles used will make the suits in Detroit, Tokyo and Stuttgart just a wee bit jealous.


SUCKS about the 40kWh-60kWh $10k software hokey pokey but at least they're seeing the light regarding quick charge cables. Good for them and all the people moving to this form of automobile transportation.
 
Awesome, so your 40Kwh car now comes with a 20Kwh paperweight.

Good for reducing the C rate and will come into play as pack capacity naturally declines, but what's the point? It just seems petty? If the 40Kwh model was being discontinued, they could have withdrawn it from sale and fulfilled current orders with a free upgrade to the 60Kwh model. Instead, they decided to actually spend extra time and effort changing the software settings.
 
Now that Mercedes Benz is in the electric car market the consumers will really start taking more notice , that Electric Benz is impressive :D
 
On the bright side, even if I had a 60kwh car, I'd still only want to use 80% of it to add cycle life to the product. So I'd plan never to use than 48kwh in any case. In the end you've got a car with enough power to give you the amp rating you like, and with a battery cycle life extender built in.
 
Tesla Model S - The #1 "Large Luxury Car" Brand in America

HybridCars.com recently published "Will Tesla Model S Be Americas Best-Selling Plug-in Car in March?" which basically argued that Tesla was on the verge of becoming the best selling plugin in America. For a long time now, this sort of story, which seeks to compare the Model S with cars like the Chevy Volt or Nissan Leaf, has generated a certain amount of consternation on my part because those cars are quite different from the Model S.

The base price of the entry level Model S is a full 50% higher than that of the Volt and more than twice what the Leaf now costs. The Model S is a much larger car, is much more luxurious and has far better performance. Other than the fact that all are capable of plugging into a wall, the cars have nothing in common with each other. You might as well compare a Nissan Versa with an Audi A8.

In fact, there are vehicles that are quite a bit like the Model S in virtually every respect other than being powered by gasoline. Depending on who is doing the classification the Model S could fit into a number of different categories, but the best fit is probably one that GoodCarBadCar.net defines as "Large Luxury Cars".

These are large luxury sedans priced in the $70,000+ range, and the segment is dominated by major players like the BMW 6 Series and 7 Series, Mercedes-Benz S Class and Lexus LS. Other entries include the Porsche Panamera, Audi A8 and Jaguar XJ. For all practical purposes, these vehicles represent the cars and companies that the Model S is competing against, and having seen the report by HybridCars I was curious as to how well Tesla is doing compared to it's actual competition.

Of course you immediately run into the problem that HybridCar's (and others) have run into, which is that Tesla does not routinely report it's sales figures. Unlike major automakers, Tesla only provides that information when it releases its quarterly financial results. From those, we know that Tesla “sold” about 250 Model S’s in the third quarter, which ended on September 30th, and approximately 2,400 cars in the fourth quarter, which ended on December 31st. What is interesting about those numbers is that by averaging 800 cars per month in the fourth quarter of 2012 Tesla was carving out significant market share in the Large Luxury Car market.

Since December 31 we have received no official sales figures from Tesla. With the first quarter of 2013 about to end we are left to read various tea leaves to try and guesstimate sales for the Model S. HybridCars.com (using an unknown methodology) estimates that Tesla sold 1,000 vehicles in January and 1,400 in February. I’m not sure what brand of tea they were drinking but those numbers put Tesla Motors into an dogfight with BMW for 1st place in this market.

According to the sales estimate that they cited in their comparison with the Volt (and listed on their "Dashboard") the Tesla Model S is very close to matching the combined North American Sales of both the BMW 6 Series and 7 Series during the first two months of the year. In January BMW sold 1042 cars in this class, and upped that to 1,511 in February.

Source -
January 2013 Large Luxury Car Sales In America
January 2013 Large Luxury Car Sales In Canada
February 2013 Large Luxury Car Sales In America
February 2013 Large Luxury Car Sales In Canada


The only hole in this argument is that HybridCars is using a Tesla sales estimate of unknown origin and accuracy. Curious to find out whether this could possibly be true, I set out to find some tea leaves of my own to read. And as is commonly the case when dealing with the Model S, the go to source for information is our own Tesla Motors Club. Among the myriad types of data that we track on this site is a spreadsheet that contains the VIN numbers and actual delivery dates for hundreds of our members. Based on that document I created this graph, which is tracking actual delivered cars (as opposed to reservations).



There is a lot of data here, and the VIN number does not correlate 100% to sales because the company has produced a number of cars for testing, store displays and test drives. Furthermore, you can’t just look at the highest VIN delivered by a given date, because there are inevitably many cars in transit. Instead you have to look at the entire cluster (lowest to highest) and find the best fit to determine the likely number of delivered cars by a given date.

From this graph, and using these methods, we can infer that for the first two months of the year Tesla has delivered approximately 3025 cars. We know this because the data in late February is clustered around the trendline and strongly suggests ~5,800 total delivered cars of which 2,650 were delivered in 2012. I’ve arbitrarily assigned another 125 cars to company use, leaving 3025 delivered in 2013. Broken down by month we see ~1,325 sales in January and ~1,700 sales in February. These numbers are broadly consistent with publically reported Tesla production figures of 400+ cars per week which Tesla reached sometime in the middle of December (the factory took a week off in January to rest its workers).

The VIN data strongly suggests that Tesla is currently enjoying a sizable lead in the in the North American Large Luxury Car market. We'll obviously get some additional clarity at the next shareholders meeting, but from my seat it looks like Tesla, to this point in 2013, is sitting atop the most prestigious market segment of the most prestigious market in the world.

North American Large Luxury Car YTD – 9,179 (excluding Tesla); ~12,204 total
Tesla Sales/Market Share YTD ~ 3,025/~24.8% (est.)
BMW Sales/Market Share YTD – 2,553/~20.9%
Daimler Sales/Market Share YTD – 1,912/~15.7%
Lexus Sales/Market Share YTD – 1,903/~15.6%


North American Large Luxury Car January Sales – 4,656 (excluding Tesla); ~5,981 total
Tesla Sales/Market Share January ~ 1,325/~22.1% (est.)
Lexus Sales/Market Share January – 1,088/~18.2%
BMW Sales/Market Share January – 1,042/~17.4%
Daimler Sales/Market Share January – 964/~16.1%


North American Large Luxury Car February Sales – 4,523 (excluding Tesla); ~6,223 total
Tesla Sales/Market Share February ~ 1,700/~27.3% (est.)
BMW Sales/Market Share February – 1,511/~24.3%
Daimler Sales/Market Share February – 948/~15.2%
Lexus Sales/Market Share February – 815/~13.1%

http://www.teslamotorsclub.com/entry.php/75-Tesla-Model-S-The-1-quot-Large-Luxury-Car-quot-Brand-in-America

That some going for a new company. I wonder how many cars they can produce before the year is out? I think 60,000 cars per year is the total market share looking at those figures.
 
Elon Musk the CEO of Tesla is a genius. That guy is truly remarkable. Everyone counts him out, and he keeps proving people wrong time and time again. We need more millionaires and billionairs like him. Imagine what this country would be like if the wealthy actually DID something with their money instead of hoarding it.

The Tesla Model S is a decade ahead of other cars in technology. Its just a really cool car to own.
 
Musk's decision to lease a Model S was a great idea. Even leasing at $500 a month it is now affordable for upper middle class people and not just the wealthy.
 
Great car! I want one badddd.

Tesla is taking away business from BMW and Mercedes Benz.

Tesla needs to advertise more. Sponsor Colin kaepernick or something.
 
Doesn't Tesla only make money off of selling tax credits to regular automotive companies that don't have enough EV's in their product lines?
I've heard the tesla cars themselves are not profitable.
 
velias said:
Doesn't Tesla only make money off of selling tax credits to regular automotive companies that don't have enough EV's in their product lines?
I've heard the tesla cars themselves are not profitable.

You heard wrong. They have a gross profit margin of between 25 and 30 per cent per car. Once they get their two new high efficiency assembly lines fully sorted that margin will grow further.

The reason why they are not more profitable in terms of company net margin is several fold. Firstly Tesla are a newly formed company.

They are rolling out superchargers on three continents, building service centres and shop fronts throughout the world without the hindrance of an outdated dealer model.

Tesla are investing huge amounts of capital into upgrading their factory in preparation for the upcoming Model X and Model 3 and Tesla are spending large amounts of R'nD' on said upcoming cars as well as on self driving R'nD'.

Finally, they are pumping money into a battery factory - the like of which the world had never seen before. Oh and they also are pouring investment into their battery storage business and industry that will eventually dwarf the entire global transport sector.

Their cars are highly profitable but all the above requires huge sums of money. Tesla are correctly playing the long game and trading short-term profit for long term success. If they succeed, and they probably will, they have the potential to become a trillion dollar company.
 
http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrick...ld-stop-selling-cars-wed-all-save-some-money/


From the Forbes article.......

"Tesla didn’t generate a profit by selling sexy cars, but rather by selling sleazy emissions “credits,” mandated by the state of California’s electric vehicle requirements. The competition, like Honda, doesn’t have a mass market plug-in to meet the mandate and therefore must buy the credits from Tesla, the only company that does. The bill for last quarter was $68 million. Absent this shakedown of potential car buyers, Tesla would have lost $57 million, or $11,400 per car. As the company sold 5,000 cars in the quarter, though, $13,600 per car was paid by other manufacturers, who are going to pass at least some of that cost on to buyers of their products. Folks in the new car market are likely paying a bit more than simply the direct tax subsidy."
 
velias said:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrick...ld-stop-selling-cars-wed-all-save-some-money/


From the Forbes article.......

"Tesla didn’t generate a profit by selling sexy cars, but rather by selling sleazy emissions “credits,” mandated by the state of California’s electric vehicle requirements. The competition, like Honda, doesn’t have a mass market plug-in to meet the mandate and therefore must buy the credits from Tesla, the only company that does. The bill for last quarter was $68 million. Absent this shakedown of potential car buyers, Tesla would have lost $57 million, or $11,400 per car. As the company sold 5,000 cars in the quarter, though, $13,600 per car was paid by other manufacturers, who are going to pass at least some of that cost on to buyers of their products. Folks in the new car market are likely paying a bit more than simply the direct tax subsidy."

What's your point? You first post argued that their cars weren't profitable which isn't remotely true. At 25 per cent profit margin they are making 153 million a quarter by selling 35,000 cars. If they hit 40,000 cars which they very well may do - that number grows to 175 million a quarter. The average selling price of Model S is thought to be 70k per car.

Now I'm not exactly a statistician but it doesn't take a genius to realise that 68 million is a much smaller number than either 153 million or 175 million. The CARB credit scheme is a nice bonus but a few years from now that figure of 68 million will look like pocket change.

Forbes wouldn't care if the world burned to the ground as long as their special interests were making money. Tesla is sacrificing short term net profits for long term domination in a bold strategy. Though only a moron would maintain that their cars aren't profitable when they have one of the highest gross margins in the automotive industry.
 
My point is Tesla makes unprofitable cars that it subsidizes by selling the carbon/pollution credits to companies that make affordable cars.
 
velias said:
My point is Tesla makes unprofitable cars that it subsidizes by selling the carbon/pollution credits to companies that make affordable cars.

In other words, you're just trolling and ignoring reality.
 
How does making an observation about Tesla's profitability make someone a troll and guilty of ignoring reality?

Clearly, Tesla's current car sales volume doesn't quite cover its overheads. Selling carbon credits tips the balance.

Saying they have a 25% margin on direct costs for producing a car doesn't mean much on it's own. They could make a car for $1000, sell it for $1m and have a huge margin, but if you only sell one a year and your marketing budget is $2m, you lose.

Tesla has achieved some impressive things and it will be very interesting to see where the company goes in the future. However, blind adoration and praise because its objectives seem to fit your personal beliefs isn't a good idea. That's how people ended up in Jonestown.

BTW, Aston Martin didn't turn a profit for decades.
 
Not a troll, just putting too much emphasis on something not terribly important. Startups take some significant cashflow, especially such a tech producer as an electric car company. A way around the problem was found, they've made good use of it. Obviously that's coming to an end with the carmakers building their own electrics, but maybe this will have worked out by now.
 
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