Amid Losses, Electric Car Company Gets a Few Plugs

Tesla will begin shipping its Model S sedan later this year, and plans to roll out its Model X SUV next year.

Image: Tesla Motors

Electric carmaker Tesla may be blowing the falcon-wing doors off its pre-shipment orders of a prototype crossover. But the northern California car maker still has about a year to go before it starts making money.

The biggest news from the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call Wednesday afternoon was that it had lost $81.5 million in the fourth quarter, compared to $51.4 million in the same quarter of 2010.

But not all the news was negative in a week that has also seen the closely-watched company on something of a roll. The company has cut a deal with Daimler-Benz to deliver a vehicle using Tesla’s electric-drive train. The maker of Mercedes is an investor in Tesla, as is Toyota, and Tesla already has a deal with the Japanese automaker to jointly develop a RAV-4 electric crossover which is being built at a Canadian factory and is set to be delivered in 2014.

Further, Tesla can point to the excitement that its own prototype SUV, the Model X, has generated this week, with the company claiming $40 million in pre-orders for the vehicle since its unveiling.

"I'm incredibly excited by the sales and the interest in the Model X,” Tesla boss Elon Musk said on a conference call Wednesday. “When you introduce a product that is really groundbreaking and innovative, you don’t necessarily know how customers are going to react to that, and they reacted incredibly well. From a customer standpoint, the Model X was clearly a home run.”

And finally, independent of any work the company is doing, it appears that the Obama administration, at least, is looking to further bolster sales of electric cars, including those that Tesla makes on its own and those it helps other automakers manufacture.

President Barack Obama’s budget, presented earlier this week, calls for increasing the maximum tax credit available to buyers of electric cars and hybrids to $10,000 from $7,500.