Its sales lead over other large luxury sedans keeps growing.

Third-quarter sales of the Tesla Motors Model S electric sedan surged 59 percent from last year to 9,156 units, the company confirmed to Autoblog today. The sales are about five percent more than our previous third-quarter estimate, since that was a guess based on Tesla’s disclosure of its global quarterly sales. Bloomberg News, which first reported the US sales figures, said the Model S was the country’s best-selling luxury sedan in the third quarter, and by a wide margin. Tesla also sold 5,428 Model X vehicles during the quarter, Tesla confirmed.

The Model S sales were almost double the sales figures for the No. 2 US luxury sedan, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, and more than double the sales of the BMW 7-Series. No other model moved more than 2,000 units during the quarter. In all, the Model S accounted for almost a third of the country’s third-quarter large luxury sedan market, which also includes models from Audi, Lexus, Porsche, Jaguar, and Maserati. Our prior estimates, which assumed that 55 percent of Tesla’s global Model S sales are in North America, had Tesla selling 8,691 Model S vehicles during the third quarter. Either way, the Model S continues to be a category-defining vehicle.
The better-than-previously-reported news marks a bit of positive direction for a company dogged by investor concerns that it’s burning through too much cash, especially as it prepares to...