Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re one Elon Musk, you’re probably ready for just about anything to take the place of the only story dominating the Tesla tagline for the past few weeks. Of course, a $90 million net loss isn’t the ideal story to overtake the Model S kerfuffle, but hey — at least the company’s aiming to pull in a profit next quarter. In a bid to keep investors focused on the positive, the automaker’s Q4 2012 shareholder letter notes that Tesla is officially predicting its first quarterly profit in Q1 2013, sliding up from “late 2013.”

For the quarter that just wrapped, the firm saw revenues of $306 million (a 500 percent increase sequentially from the $50.1 million seen in Q3 2012), and it ended the year with $221 million in total cash after having made the first quarterly principal payment of $12.7 million to repay the loan to the U.S. Department of Energy. Tesla also plans to deliver some 20,000 Model S vehicles in 2013, with around 4,500 of those happening in Q1. Europeans and Asians can expect their deliveries in “summer” / “late this year” (respectively), with the first Model X deliveries to occur in early 2014. Musk also told investors that it plans to “spend significantly less on capital expenditures” in 2013 compared to 2012, helping to (hopefully) generate “slightly positive net income on a non-GAAP basis” in Q1 2013.

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Source: Tesla

We’ve seen the Model X in the flesh before, at its showy unveiling last February at which Tesla CEO Elon Musk turned up to show off the “Falcon Wing” rear doors and the rather… compact seating arrangement that makes room for three full rows of short-legged human beings. Here in Detroit at NAIAS the 2014 model year car is making another appearance, doors open and interior fully-functional. We couldn’t resist hopping in there to check out the 17-inch multi-function touch panel. Largely the same as that in the Model S, the panel lets you manage climate control, navigation and, yes, do a little web surfing too. It’s all demonstrated in the video after the break.

Continue reading Tesla Model X SUV hands-on (video)

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Tesla founder Elon Musk would like to remind you that the Model X isn’t the terminus of his company’s electric car ambitions. Far from it: Musk tells Wired that Tesla’s 2016 plans include both a crossover SUV akin to the BMW X3 as well as a pure sports car that goes beyond just a Roadster redux. The racier vehicle will have speed, but “not supercar pricing,” the CEO says. He also elaborated on already-known plans for an ‘entry’ sedan in 2015, which should resemble a 20 to 25 percent smaller Model S and cost about $30,000 if all goes well. There’s a wide gap between promises and reality in all those statements, but Musk has a reputation for largely delivering on target — which gives us hope that there will finally be Tesla EVs within range of everyday budgets.

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Tesla CEO teases crossover and sports car EVs for 2016 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Sep 2012 16:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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