Tesla Model S sales appear to have passed the 100,000 mark sometime during Quarter 4 2015 — though, no official announcements have been made as of yet.
The unofficial tally now rests somewhere around 107,000 — following the delivery of ~17,200 Model S electric vehicles (EVs) during the recent 4th quarter of 2015. (A tip of the hat here to “MacroP” on the Tesla Motors Club forum for noticing this.) The numbers for the 4th quarter represent a substantial increase over the numbers for previous quarters — with a nearly 50% increase in deliveries as compared to the 3rd quarter of 2015, and a 75% increase over Q4 2014.
That said, the company just barely met its projections for the year — though, that’s more a matter of the “optimistic” nature of the company and its CEO Elon Musk than it is to do with poor performance, imho — with roughly 50,580 units delivered in 2015. This compares to projections for the delivery of 50,000 to 52,000 vehicles in 2015. Though, it should be noted, earlier predictions from Musk placed deliveries for the year at around 55,000.
Market Watch provides a few more details:
Tesla announced Sunday that it delivered 17,400 cars in the final three months of the year, a big jump from the previous quarter’s record total of 11,603. The leap was expected, however, as Tesla had predicted fourth-quarter deliveries of 17,000 to 19,000 after launching its new SUV, the second all-electric car fully designed and manufactured by Tesla. Tesla only delivered 208 Model X cars in the fourth quarter while producing 507 of the automobiles, seeming to hold back to ensure any problems with the new car were not widespread.
Overall, what the numbers show is that the company’s growth over the last few years has been robust — even though the company has essentially only been selling one model (following the end of Roadster production several years back). It’ll be very interesting to see what happens with delivery numbers this year, as Model X production picks up. The degree to which Model S sales will be cannibalized the Model X is still something of an unknown — though, it seems likely that overall sales (and thus, eventually, delivery) numbers will see a substantial boost.
Image by Cynthia Shahan