Tesla delivered more than 10,000 cars in the first quarter of 2015, a record for the maker of electric vehicles and a 55% rise on the same period last year.
In an unexpected update on its trading progress, the California-based company, which is led by Elon Musk, said it would change the way it provides details about its performance to avoid “inaccurate sources of information [that] are sometimes used by others to project the number of vehicle deliveries”.
It now intends to publish the number of deliveries within three days of the end of the quarter – more punctually than is currently the case.
The Wall Street Journal estimated that Tesla sells a similar number of cars globally in a quarter as General Motors sells in the US in a day.
Tesla’s share price has fallen 14% this year as investors showed their concern about the company’s failure to hit sales targets in China and the departure last year of two top executives for the country.
Musk has set a target to deliver 55,000 of its environmentally friendly cars globally in 2015, an increase of about 74 %. Based on the 10,030 vehicles delivered in the first quarter, it would need to deliver about 15,000 vehicles in each of the remaining three quarters to hit its target.
Musk is worth $11.6bn (£7.8bn), according to Forbes magazine’s barometer of wealth. He is working on a $1bn plan to launch 700 satellites to try to provide internet access to the billions of people without it, according to reports.
Born in South Africa, Musk now lives in California. His first entrepreneurial foray was at the age of 12, when he sold a video game called Blastar. He was later behind the online payment company that was to become PayPal.
Musk, who has said he would donate $10m for research into artificial intelligence, recently tweeted several optimistic statements about the company’s sagging China operations.
Tesla is working on a number of new products and upgrades, including hands-free steering on its Model S sedan in three months, about a year ahead of other automakers.
Late last month, the company also said it would reveal a new product on 30 April, but that it would not be a car.
Musk said in February that Tesla would soon unveil a home battery that would be ready to go into production in about six months, sparking speculation that this could be the new product slated for launch.
