Posts Tagged ‘Tesla’
Smart-ass license plate of the day
Pic of the Week
You know that Green is starting to happen when three variants on Green Cars get into a mixer with each other.
Shows you how strong a Prius is when – as far as I can see – it was the Prius in the photo that shoved theTesla underneath the VW Touareg.
All three drivers are presumed to have walked away from the crash including the Tesla Roadster pilot.
Yes, I count the Touareg as Green because other sources noted it as a diesel.
Tesla Motors claims first-ever monthly profit = $1 million in July
It’s shaping up to be a bittersweet summer for Tesla Motors. While in June the electric car startup became embroiled in a lawsuit with founder Martin Eberhard, the Department of Energy also approved a long-awaited $465 million loan for battery manufacturing and the Model S electric sedan. And now Tesla says that in July, for the first time ever, it achieved “overall corporate profitability,” with $1 million in earnings on $20 million in revenue.
Over the last several months, Tesla has highlighted units within the company as they became cash-flow positive — first the powertrain supply unit, and then the core Roadster business…
What made the difference last month? It wasn’t the DOE loan. Konrad confirmed with us this morning that the government funds were not included in the calculation for July earnings. Rather, it was primarily sales of the new, second-generation Roadster (pictured above) that helped push it into the black for July. In addition, the $128,500 Roadster Sport, a tricked-out version of the Roadster, began shipping in late June with beefier margins than the $109,000 base model.
According to Konrad, there were no one-time events in July that boosted revenue — just healthy sales. But the company is now poised to make some big investments developing the Model S. “It’s definitely conceivable that we would not be in the black every month going forward,” Konrad told us this morning, “as expenditures ramp up” for the Model S project.
That’s OK. Any start-up having a profitable month this early in its young life is doing respectably well.
More power to you, folks. I still wish you’d think about starting up the low[er]-price sedan here in New Mexico.
