Tesla Earnings Call: Lithium-Ion Cell ‘Giga-Plant’ Needed For Future ProductionTesla Earnings Call: Lithium-Ion Cell ‘Giga-Plant’ Needed For Future Production

Tesla held its third-quarter earnings call yesterday evening, and CEO Elon Musk stayed pretty much on message.
He reiterated that Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] continues to produce its Model S electric luxury sedan, at a current rate of 550 cars per week, and that it is working steadily to reduce the labor and parts costs of doing so.
Musk answered questions from auto-industry analysts for roughly an hour after the release of the company’s Q3 earnings letter.
We’ll leave the dissection of Tesla’s financial results to them, but here are a few points we took away from the call and the letter combined:

A total of 5,500 Model S cars were sold during the quarter, including more than 1,000 delivered in Europe
Tesla expects to sell roughly 21,500 cars during 2013, a slight increase of 500 from its previous projection, which would put fourth-quarter global sales at “slightly under 6,000” cars
The company did not discuss its plans for production volume during 2014
Its R+D spending will rise in the current quarter, as it increases the pace of development on its Model X crossover utility vehicle
Production of the Model X is still planned to start at the very end of next year, with volume sales coming in the second quarter of 2015
U.S. demand for the Model S is growing, with an increase in reservations last quarter–though the company did not specify any numbers
The company is constrained by production limits, including its supply of lithium-ion cells, not by limits on demand
As Tesla expands its European sales beyond Norway into Germany, the Netherlands, and other countries–including the U.K.–it will have to “starve” some markets of increased sales, Musk said
Interest in the Model S in China is high, Musk said, though the company won’t begin delivering cars there until next February
At the end of the quarter, Tesla had installed 31 Supercharger quick-charging stations in the U.S. and another six in Norway
Panasonic is already capable of supplying Tesla with enough lithium-ion cells for planned 2014 production, and the two companies worked closely on the recent deal to supply 1.8 billion cells over four years
To buy enough lithium-ion cells to supply planned production of Model S and Model X by 2015, and its third-generation car in 2017, the company will need a “giga-plant” to make those cells that could make as many cells as all of today’s global production
Tesla isn’t quite ready to make an announcement on that plant
But such a facility would probably be located in the U.S.–though the company is looking outside the country too–and would likely be built in conjunction with battery partners
Revenue from selling zero-emission vehicle credits to other automakers fell substantially in the third quarter–from $51 million in Q2 to $10 million this past quarter–as Musk and CFO Deepak Ahuja had previously predicted

Tesla’s stock price fell in after-hours trading following the release of the earnings letter and the subsequent call.
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