After losing $90 million in the first three months of 2012, luxury electric carmaker,Tesla Motors, said Wednesday the start-up company will turn a profit in the first quarter of 2013.
Observers in the auto industry regard this year's performance of Tesla as a barometer on whether Americans in general will adopt electric cars, the Detroit Free Press reported.
The company's 2012 forth quarter revenues blazed to $306.3 million, up from $39 million in the same quarter the year before. Full-year revenue was listed at $413 million, with a loss of $396 million, the article said.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk tried to offset the bad news of the losses with news that his company had increased production ad decreased capital expenditures, which, he said, should allow Tesla to generate a small profit for the current quarter, CNN Money reported.
"Due to an enormous amount of hard work by a really dedicated group of people at Tesla, we're going to be profitable, and I think that's a pretty big deal," Musk said in a conference call, according to CNN Money.
American's have yet to embrace the idea of cars operated by battery packs, which raises questions about the level of future demand for Tesla cars, which range in price from $59,900 to more than $100,000, the Free Press reported.
Americans are buying plug-in cars -- the sale of the vehicles more than tripled from 2011 to 2012 -- but electric car sales sales represent less than 0.4 percent of the light-vehicle market. Non-plug-in gas-electric hybrid vehicles were up to three percent of the total market sales, according to the Free Press.
In 2012 General Motors sold more than 23,000 Chevrolet Volts, making it the most popular electric vehicle.
Tesla's Model S sedan made headlines recently after a negative review of the car in The New York Times sparked a public relations war by the company. Musk called aspects of writer John Broder's review "fake."
See Now: OnePlus 6: How Different Will It Be From OnePlus 5?
