Tesla loses $154M in Q1, cash burn accelerates

Cleveland, Ohio – Electric car maker Tesla lost $154 million during the first three months of the year as sales of its expensive vehicles stalled and operating costs only fell slightly.

The company’s $893 million in sales for the quarter were up only 0.3% from 2014’s first quarter, a problem for Tesla as its rapidly rising sales performance has been one of its strongest points with investors. Material and manufacturing costs did drop slightly (-0.8%) but not enough to compensate for higher research and development expenses.

Tesla also burned through a significant amount of cash during the quarter – $396 million or 21% of the cash it had to start 2015. It still has more than $1.5 billion in the bank.

”We remain confident in our ability to deliver approximately 55,000 Model S and Model X vehicles combined in 2015, as increased availability of all our Model S variants continue to drive demand,” Tesla executives say in a letter to shareholders. “To sustainably scale for increased deliveries, our inventory of in-transit customer-configured cars must increase, and in Q1 we added 1,100 such vehicles to the pipeline.”

The Model X crossover vehicle had been set for a 2013 launch, but Tesla officials have delayed it several times. In the letter, company officials say they should have the vehicle on the road by the summer.”

”During the quarter, we also made significant progress on the installation of a new body shop, paint shop and stamping presses that will establish extra capacity for both Model X and Model S. We are now building and testing release candidate Model X prototypes with increasing design maturity, and are pleased with the progress of this program,” Tesla executives say.

Source: Tesla Motors Inc.