Tesla Announces Record Breaking Car Deliveries In First Quarter

Tesla Motors has announced that it delivered a recording breaking 10,030 cars in the first quarter, which is an increase of 55 percent in comparison to its number of deliveries in the first quarter of 2014.

Going forward, the company said it will publish the number of new car deliveries within three days of quarter end, as inaccurate sources of information have sometimes been used by others in publishing the number of vehicle deliveries.

“There may be small changes to this delivery count (usually well under 1 percent), as Tesla only counts a delivery if it is transferred to the end customer and all paperwork is correct,” the company wrote in a press release. “Also, this is only one measure of our financial performance and should not be relied on as an indicator of our quarterly financial results, which depend on a variety of factors, including the cost of sales, foreign exchange movements and mix of directly leased vehicles.”

Tesla’s first quarter sales certainly show growth for the electric-carmaker. It also reinforces the expectation that the company is banking on an acceleration of its quarter growth rate over the rest of the year. CEO Elon Musk has set a target of 55,000 for 2015, and he points to the launch of the Model X sport utility vehicle in the second half of the year as an event that will greatly increase the volume of sales.

The company’s decision to not release monthly sales reports has led several third parties to estimate U.S. results, such as WardsAuto.com, Autodata Corp. and Automotive News. Often, these companies differ in their forecasts. As an example, WardsAuto.com estimates that Tesla sold 1,039 cars in March, Autodata estimates March deliveries to have been 1,350, and Automotive News says that the number is actually 1,200.

Tesla’s stock has been battered this year by investors who are concerned about the automaker’s failure to hit sales targets in China, as well as the departures of two of the company’s top executives in that country last year. Elon Musk has tweeted several optimistic statements about the automaker’s sagging China operations recently, but the concerns over its future in that country remain for many, at least for now.

Tesla shares closed Thursday up 1.8 percent at $191. The company’s $24 billion in market capitalization compares with GM’s $58.8 billion in stock-market value, and Ford Motor Co.’s $63.4 billion.