US luxury electric car manufacturer Tesla has reported record sales of a little over 25,000 cars in the first quarter of CY2017. Of this, approximately 13,450 were Model S and 11,550 were Model X.

This is a new quarterly record for the company and represents an increase of 69 percent over Q1 2016. Vehicle production in the first quarter of this year totaled 25,418 vehicles, which is also a new quarterly record. According to Tesla, “In addition to Q1 deliveries, about 4,650 vehicles were in transit to customers at the end of the quarter. These will be counted as deliveries in Q2 2017.”

Meanwhile, Tesla, which expected to sell around 50,000 vehicles in the first half of 2017, has surpassed Ford Motor Co in market capitalisation. This is despite the company being in debt.  While some carmakers reported a fall in US market sales in March 2017, investors were bullish on Tesla stock and took it up to a record US$ 298 to reach a market capitalisation of US$ 48 billion, ahead of Ford which was valued at $45 billion. GM remains top dog at around US$ 51 billion.

Going forward, Tesla is banking heavily on the US$ 35,000 Model 3, whose production is slated to begin around July this year and is billed to reach capacity of 500,000 units per annum by the end of 2018.