Tesla Motors delivered 9,834 Model S sedans and manufactured more than 11,000 vehicles in the fourth quarter, meeting its goal of 35,000 vehicles for the 2014 calendar year.
The company built 11, 627 Model S sedans during the quarter, although not all the cars were sold during the period because of severe weather and shipping problems, said Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive.
In its quarterly letter to shareholders, the company said that “delivering those cars was physically impossible due to a combination of customers being on vacation, severe winter weather and shipping problems (with actual ships). As a result, about 1,400 vehicles shipped in December and were delivered in Q1. Our Q4 financials reflect this delivery shortfall, (and) one-time manufacturing inefficiencies.”
Tesla said production, deliveries and profits should all improve in 2015, aided by the third-quarter launch of the Model X.
The company plans to deliver 55,000 vehicles in 2015, a 70 percent increase over 2014 and 5,000 more vehicles than Tesla’s previous goal. The company entered the year with 10,000 orders for the Model S and 20,000 orders for the Model X.
Tesla said it has built 30 beta prototypes of the Model X for testing, and plans to start producing a small fleet of “Release Candidate” vehicles in March “that will be very close to the final production-intent design.”
Early crash testing has “given us confidence that Model X will live up to the very high safety standard set by Model S,” Tesla said.
Tesla also reported a loss of $107.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2014. The company said it had a loss of 86 cents per share. Fourth-quarter revenues were $957 million, up 55 percent from $615 million in the last quarter of 2013. Revenue using Tesla’s preferred non-GAAP accounting method rose 44 percent to $1.1 billion. For all of 2014, Tesla’s net loss widened to $294 million from $74 million in 2013. Revenue soared 59 percent to $3.2 billion.
