Tesla Motors says its electric sedan sales have exceeded the guidance it laid out two months ago and it expects to show a profit in the first quarter, a big victory for small high-tech automaker.
Tesla stock jumped $6.64 or more than 17%, to $44.53 on the news early Monday.
But customers who want to try to jump on the bandwagon to own one of the chic electric cars on the cheap may be in for a disappointment.
The electric car maker has announced that it's not going to offer its cheapest version of the Model S sedan, the starter model that was originally priced at about $57,000.
The California automaker says that orders for the car were so low, at about 4% of the mix, that it isn't worth making the 40 kilowatt-hour battery pack version. Instead, the company will focus on two higher-watt versions.
Tesla says it is scoring both on sales and production. It made 4,750 cars in the first quarter and none languished on sales lots. All are destined for customers who placed orders. The output was 250 cars more than Tesla had promised in a February letter to shareholders laying out its first-quarter guidance.
The company says all those cars will be the more expensive versions now that it has decided to stop taking orders for the base 40 kWh model.
With the 40 kWh no longer in the mix, the cheapest Tesla becomes the 60 kWh Model S , which is is government rated at 208 miles per charge . The top model is the 85 kWh version, which can go 265 miles on a single charge, the most of any major electric car in the market.
Most electric cars have ranges of less than 100 miles per charge, so the long range is what has set Tesla apart from the crowd.
For those who have already ordered one of the 40 kWh Model S sedans, Tesla says it's going to give them one with the 60 kWh that has been electronically limited. It will offer the range of the 40 kWh car they ordered. But they will always have the option of paying more to upgrade the car to full 60 kWh capability.
Tesla says in its announcement that customers are getting a better-than-expected deal because the cars will come with the hardware necessary to use the company's Supercharger fast-charging units, which it's putting outside metropolitan areas to boost the car's range.
Using the Supercharger, for instance, it says Tesla Model S owners can easily drive between Los Angeles and either Las Vegas or San Francisco. Their cars' batteries can be charged at a Supercharger in the few minutes it takes for a lunch stop along the way.
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