Elon Musk: Tesla to accept orders on new vehicle

Tesla built more cars in Q4 than it ever had before, with 14,037 EVs rolling out, and it’s expecting to reach 1,000 Model Xs built every week during Q2.

Tesla’s fourth quarter revenue rose 27% to $1.21 billion from $956.6 million a year earlier as deliveries of its new vehicles jumped 76% in the quarter.

Tesla said its long-promised moderately priced vehicle, the Model 3, would be unveiled on March 31. According to the latest statistics, the starting price of the auto will be $35,000, which is much more affordable as opposed to models like Model X or Model S.

The company’s heavily shorted stock has lost 40 percent of its value this year, excluding Thursday’s gains, as Tesla has struggled with production delays and the detrimental effect of cheap gasoline prices on demand for electric cars. He noted that Model S sedan sales rose in 2015 even as luxury competitors like the Audi A7 and Lexus LS fell. Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk however, has removed market concerns during the 4Q results announcement, which may result in higher stock prices in upcoming trading sessions. Market analysts expected Tesla to post earnings of $0.10 per share, but share value actually fell by $0.85 per share.

The Model 3 – Tesla’s first mass market auto – is a big reason why Musk thinks the company could deliver 500,000 vehicles a year by 2020.

“Our default plan as we’ve done in the past is that the initial sales are relatively highly-optioned versions of the auto, because we’ve got to pay back the investment of the tooling and everything, so it makes sense to have the higher optioned versions first”, he explained. Capacity expansion for Model X, and the construction of the Gigafactory led capital expenditures to rise from $386 million in 4QFY14, to $411 million 4QFY15.

The tweets by the billionaire followed a note in the company’s earnings release on Wednesday that the Model 3 is on schedule for deliveries in late 2017. Similarly, Model X gross margin is estimated to be about 25% with a focus on continued improvement in 2017.

The base model Model S has a minimum range of 240 miles, but the Model 3 probably won’t go quite as far.

The session apparently didn’t give the entrepreneur the chance to say everything he wanted to about Model 3.