Tesla showed a major redesign of its electric sedan, the Model S, on Wednesday in its fourth quarter 2020 earnings report.
The company shared photos of the new interior and exterior of the car that will be released later this year. It also introduced its “Plaid” offering, a three-engine powertrain that allowed the car to go from zero to 60 miles per hour in less than 2 seconds. The new Model S starts at $ 79,990. The Plaid version starts at $ 119,990.
CEO Elon Musk said on a revenue call on Wednesday that the Model S Plaid was now in production and will be shipped from February.
“It’s a really huge improvement over the previous version,” added Musk.
In late 2020, Tesla discontinued production lines for the Model S and Model X at its Fremont plant to prepare for production of the updated versions of the cars, a sedan and SUV with falcon-wing doors. The company said production will resume on Wednesday in the first quarter and “will return to full capacity over time.”
“In recent weeks, we’ve upgraded our Fremont plant to launch the new Model S and Model X improvements,” the company said in its latest earnings update released Wednesday.
Deliveries of Tesla’s Model S and X were down in 2020 to just 18,966 in the fourth quarter. Tesla does not split car sales by model type.
According to the report, production of the two models fell 10% year over year to 16,097 in the fourth quarter.
Tesla Model S front interior
Tesla
Shares fell more than 3% during extended trading after the company reported earnings for the fourth quarter of 2020. The company reported earnings per share of 80 cents on revenues of $ 10.74 billion. Analysts expected earnings per share of $ 1.03 on sales of $ 10.4 billion.
The company also gave some production guidance for the future, writing, “Over a horizon of several years, we expect an average annual growth of 50% in vehicle deliveries.” The company expects faster delivery growth than that for 2021.
– CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
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