Shipping a record 109 Roadsters in July
Chuck Squatriglia -
WIRED - 08/07/09
Nice to see a car company making a profit, especially with an EV --Ed.
Tesla Motors says it earned a profit last month, the first time the Silicon Valley automaker has run in the black since its founding in 2002.
The company earned $1 million on $20 million in revenue in July after shipping a record 109 Roadsters. It attributed the profit largely to improved margins on the electric two-seater and a “surge” in orders for the car, which has a base price of $109,000.
“We achieved bottom-line profitability thanks to a tremendous amount of hard work by the Tesla team to improve quality, while simultaneously reducing costs on the Roadster,” company CEO Elon Musk said in a statement. “This also shows there is a strong demand for the car… Moreover, customers know that in buying the Roadster they are helping fund development of our mass-market electric cars.”
It’s a significant development and big news for Tesla, but don’t expect it to become a trend.
Most of that money rolled in after Tesla delivered cars customers had already placed deposits on. Although the company has, according to spokeswoman Rachel Konrad, seen a “surge” in orders for the Roadster and the higher-performance Roadster Sport (price: $127,500), it isn’t likely to keep rolling cars out so quickly. Konrad says Tesla is “definitely on pace” to meet its goal of 1,000 to 1,200 cars a year but didn’t say when that might happen. Tesla has so far delivered about 609 Roadsters since production started in March, 2008.
Konrad also notes that Tesla is dumping a lot of money into expanding its retail operation. Tesla already has showrooms in Menlo Park, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle and London. New stores will open in Chicago, Miami, Munich and Monaco by the end of September and in Washington, D.C. and Toronto by the end of the year....
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