Tesla Now Making, Delivering 500 Model S Electric Cars Weekly

With a backlog of more than 10,000 depositors for the Tesla Model S, its maker is making and delivering electric luxurysedans as fast as it can.

Among other benefits, that may allow Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] to achieve CEO Elon Musk's suggestion that the company could be profitable for the first quarter of this year.

George Blankenship, Tesla's vice president of worldwide sales and ownership experience, said in December that the company had reached its target production rate of 400 cars a week.

And that 400-cars-per-week production ratewas backed up in January by Jerome Guillen, director of Model S programs.

Now, in the company's latest blog post, Blankenship says that rate has risen.

"During the past three weeks we have averaged more than 500 Model S deliveries per week, and it looks like we’ll be setting another record this week."

And that number is backed up, more or less, by a little-noticed article in theWestfield Republican, an upstate New York newspaper that covers the region where Jamestown Plastics is located.

That's the company that makes liners for the Model S front trunk--which Tesla insists on calling a "frunk"--and ships them to Tesla's Silicon Valley assembly plant in Fremont, California.

About "500 a week are fabricated at the Jamestown Plastics, Inc., operation in Brocton," says the article.

Taken together, it sounds like Tesla Motors is now cranking out its first high-volume electric car at a rate of 2,000 per month or better.

Which should make its investors--and depositors--happy.

Source: Green Car Reports