Tesla Motors Turns a Profit For the First Time

d0rp writes with news that Tesla Motors has reported earning a profit for the first time in its six-year history. Sales of the $109,000 Roadster earned the company $20 million in revenue, which settled out to $1 million in profits. "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." The company is working on a new 'Model S' sedan, with the help of $465 million in government loans, and has also entered into a partnership with Daimler to help the German auto company produce electric Smart cars.

Comments

Re:Long road behind and more ahead

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW China is starting to honor IP... Why? Chinese companies are starting to sue Chinese companies for stealing of their IP.
BS. China is ONLY protecting OTHER Chinese companies. The Chinese gov. STILL encourages Chinese companies to out and out steal from western companies. In addition, they still have their money fixed against the Euro and Dollar, as well a have full trade barriers in place. Show me evidence that any western company suing is changing things with regard to Western companies.

Customer is a sucker... do the math

[catmistake]

I love these cars... I do... but they make no financial sense.
$109,000???

for $9000 you can get a very very nice gas guzzler that's maybe a year or so old (sticker $18K).
for $100,000 you can get 20,000 gallons of gas at $5/gallon, giving you
200,000 miles at 10MPG
domestic gas guzzlers are cheap to repair, can be maintained anywhere in the US.

Even if I had a billion dollars, I'd rather give a million to a random poor person than spend $109,000 on my insecure ego, and delude myself into thinking I was helping the environment.