Charlie Smith
THE profits of Tesla Spain have surged by 93%, amid a series of high-profile blunders from billionaire CEO Elon Musk.
The subsidiary of the California-headquartered electric car company closed 2018 with a net profit of €373,286.
Turnover for the company at the end of last year stood at €32.24 million, marking a 4.6% decrease on the €33.82 million in 2017.
Its profit before taxes stood at €495,526 in 2018, which is a 106% increase compared with the year before.
Increases in Tesla Spain’s net and gross profits come despite selling just 306 units in 2018 – a 13% decline.
This has been explained by lower sales figures of the Model S, Tesla’s electric saloon, which boasts a battery life distance of 610km – the largest of any battery-powered road car.
With just 152 units shifted in 2018, there was a 27% drop in the vehicle’s sales, while sales of the seven-seater Model X increased 8% to 154 units.
The news comes after a year of PR disasters for Musk personally, with the 48-year-old entrepreneur having been embroiled in a €170 million court battle.
He was being sued by heroic British diver Vernon Unsworth who rescued children from a Thai cave, after labelling him a ‘pedophile’ on Twitter, but has now been acquitted.
Meanwhile, Musk was also left red-faced after boasting in a keynote speech that the windows of the new Tesla Cybertruck were ‘indestructible’, only for them to be smashed with a metal ball moments later.
