Tesla will deliver 70 percent more vehicles in 2015

While everyone would still like Tesla Motors to announce monthly sales numbers, at least we now have the latest quarterly delivery figures from the all-electric automaker. Tesla says it delivered 9,834 vehicles in the last quarter of 2014 and built 11,627 vehicles. Tesla says the production delays for the new, dual-motor P85D version of the Model S pushed some deliveries back to the first quarter of 2015. That 11,627 is a record number of vehicles made in any quarter for the automaker and it helped Tesla hit its stated goal of building 35,000 vehicles in 2014.

In its latest shareholder letter released today, Tesla said it expects to increase its number of vehicle deliveries by more than 70 percent in 2015. That includes the Model S as well as the upcoming Model X, which is going to start deliveries within the next six months. At the start of 2015, Tesla says, it had "over 10,000 orders for Model S and almost 20,000 reservations for Model X." The company says that over 30 beta versions of the X have been built and are being tested. We saw one just the other day, in fact.

Regarding reports of low Model S sales in China, the letter says, "Despite initial challenges in China, we remain convinced of the vast potential of this market and are concentrating our efforts on the cities we are in currently, before launching into new cities."

Tesla also reported a loss of $107.6 million in the fourth quarter of 2014. The company said it had a loss of 86 cents per share. Losses, adjusted for non-recurring costs and stock option expense, were 13 cents per share. The results fell short of Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 25 cents per share. The electric car maker posted revenue of $1.1 billion in the period, which also fell short of Street forecasts. Analysts expected $1.19 billion, according to Zacks. The automaker says its fourth-quarter profits fell from the impact of a strong dollar and delayed vehicle shipments. TSLA was down $3.49 today, a drop of 1.61 percent, to $212.80. The stock is up slightly more than 8 percent in the last 12 months but shares dropped two percent to $208.65 in aftermarket trading.