Despite his company suffering a near-death experience late last year, Tesla Motors’ chief executive Elon Musk believed the company will bounce back and is on track to make a profit in 2009.
Even though the company was forced to delay production of the highly anticipated Model S saloon car, Mr Musk expects it to start making profits around the middle of this year. He also expects to unveil the Model S prototype in March, as well as open showrooms for its Roadster sports car.
Tesla Motors will in fact be expanding its side business of building electric car powertrains for other companies and in January it signed on to build battery packs for Smart cars.
Currently, Tesla has only delivered 200 Roadsters and has been losing money with several customers cancelling orders due to the global economic crisis.
Tesla, which initially estimated that each Roadster would cost $65,000 to produce and then later determined it would cost around $140,000, has settled on a price tag of around $109,000 after embarking on a cost-cutting programme.
The Model S meanwhile is now scheduled for 2011 – but that is dependent on a $350million low-interest Department of Energy loan. However, even if the loan comes through Tesla does not have a site for the plant. Having initially targeted San Jose it is now in negotiations with other cities.
Nevertheless, Mr Musk remains optimistic stating that once people see the Tesla cars in action they will be eager to become customers with plans to lease showrooms in Chicago and London later this year.
