If you get over the fact that electric car pioneer Tesla Motors will lose money every quarter for almost another year, then you can relax and realize that Tesla actually had a pretty solid third quarter, which the company detailed in its earnings release on Wednesday. Tesla said its revenues were up and that it will ship its first Model S cars to customers “no later than July 2012.”
Tesla generated revenues of $57.67 million for the three months ended Sept 30, 2011, which was up from $31.24 million from the same quarter a year earlier. Tesla also raised its full year revenue guidance slightly to between $195 million and $200 million, up from its previous guidance of $180 million to $190 million. In after hour trading Tesla’s stock rose almost 5 percent to $30.10.
However, along with higher revenues, Tesla also naturally lost more money, as the company continued development of commercializing its Model S and Model X cars. Net loss for the quarter was $65.08 million, which was almost double its net loss for the same quarter a year earlier of $34.94 million. Tesla has been transparent about how it will need to spend this money to launch and start selling the Model S and Tesla said its capital expenditures for the year would be at the lower end of its guidance of between $220 million and $245 million.
Tesla also still has a decent amount of cash reserves on its balance sheet of $334 million and it still has $240 million left to draw down from its loan with the Department of Energy. Tesla has $574 million “in available capital resources.” It will need all of that to cover its costs as it moves into launching its second car Model S and third car Model X.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk says the Model S is essentially sold out for 2012, and Tesla eventually also intends to bring back the Roadster brand for a future car, likely built on the Model S platform. Watch our Model S Beta ride video (below), and check out the Model S Beta at our RoadMap event on November 10th in San Francisco.



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