Tesla tops electric car sales in December

The fast, expensive Teslas are no longer also rans among electric cars, rather they overtook all other electric car sales for the first time in December, according to a new estimate, outflanking Nissan Leaf, which sells for about a third of the price, investors.com reported.

Thought Tesla Motors does not report monthly unit sales for its Model S sedan, according to the estimates of the website InsideEVs 3,500 of them were sold in the US last month, as against 3,102 for the Leaf.

"We estimate Tesla sold 3,500 Model S sedans in December ..." InsideEVs said in its report, "the second-best result for any automaker worldwide, trailing only the 4,976 Mitsubishi Outlander PHEVs that were sold in Netherlands in December of 2013."

Unlike the rest, Tesla works under production constraints - selling as many as it could make, and had been working to ramp up production.

However, both the Leaf and the Volt, a plug-in hybrid, enjoyed heavy manufacturer incentives during 2014.

A base edition of Tesla's Model S sold for $63,570 after a federal tax credit, while the Nissan Leaf carried a $21,510 price tag. However, Tesla clocked an estimated 208 miles in range per charge of its batteries, as against just 84 miles for the Leaf.

Tesla Motors Inc.'s pricey Model S sedan was the best-selling electric car in the US in December, beating the cheaper leaf from Nissan Motors for the first time, according to one estimate.

Meanwhile Market Watch reported that Tesla did not report its monthly unit sales, it only reported quarterly deliveries with its quarterly financial results. It was next expected to report on 18 February, according to FactSet. Tesla had not yet said when it would release fourth-quarter earnings.

That meant there was much room for disagreement over just what kind of sales the Model S logged last month. According to estimates of analysts at Cowen, for instance, Tesla sold 1,900 Model S in December and 16,500 of the luxury sedan in all of 2014. Industry tracker Motor Intelligence estimated Tesla sales at 1,600 Model S in December, bringing 2014 sales to 18,750.

InsideEVs editor in chief Jay Cole told MarketWatch in an email that tracked US owner production and delivery dates in December and those were ''much, much greater'' than in November. Further, InsideEVs also got reports ''from the ground'' of hundreds of cars being delivered per day through the holidays.

''Tesla is a pretty small piece of the automotive pie, relatively speaking, so I don't think the other industry groups follow them too closely,'' Cole wrote. ''For us, Tesla is a big part of a very small segment, so we do.''