TSLA Tesla Inc

Tesla Motors Inc. Chief Executive Elon Musk has only one regret about the Model X sport utility: The company may have gone a little overboard with pushing the engineering on the electric vehicle, he said at an event Tuesday.

Mr. Musk delivered six Model X sport-utility vehicles to a select group of early investors and board members in front of thousands of Tesla customers and fans late Tuesday evening. He spoke to reporters before the event.

From its unique "falcon wing" doors that feature ultrasonic sensors that tell the doors how close they are to other vehicles, to an enormous windshield that sweeps seamlessly into the roof, to pedestal seats that give more foot room and front doors that open when you walk toward them, the Model X is loaded with engineering feats, he said.

"I think we got a little carried away with the X," he said. "If we had known the true engineering costs and complexity, we would have done fewer things."

Tesla has only just started building the SUV, and Mr. Musk said production now is very slow. He wouldn't make a guess as to how many the company might be able to build this year but said orders placed today for the vehicle would take 8 to 12 months to fill.

Tesla has already lowered its annual sales forecast to a range of 50,000 to 55,000 vehicles. A slow start to production of the X could cause another reduction.

The SUV is Tesla's third product and is important to the company's efforts to make money and grow sales. The SUV took two years longer to produce than originally forecast as the company took on several manufacturing challenges, like building the doors that lift upward from the vehicle. The doors actually sense how close other objects are and can either raise straight up or spread out like wings.

The giant windshield—which allows the driver to look up and see sky—presented manufacturing problems as well. It has layered glass that blocks the sun. And because there is no metal until a third of the way along the roof, the sun visors had to be attached to the side pillars, making them difficult to engineer.

Some of Tesla's customers have been waiting for more than three years, having put down $40,000 to be among the "signature" group that gets the vehicles first. These customers ordered fully loaded vehicles that cost $132,000. There is another, higher-tier version—the "ludicrous" edition of the Model X—that goes from zero to 60 mph in 3.2 seconds. It will cost $142,000.

It also has a HEPA air filter that Mr. Musk said would make the air in the cabin so clean that it actually could filter chemicals from a biological weapon. "Bioweapon defense mode is there, in the HVAC" menu, he said.

Mr. Musk said he expects the SUV to be the first ever to score a perfect five stars in every category of crash testing, getting a top billing on the rollover test, which most SUVs cannot attain because of their higher center of gravity. Because of the 1,000-pound battery pack on the bottom of the vehicle, it is very difficult to roll over, he said.

Tesla hasn't revealed the price of the base model, a 90-kilowatt-hour version with a range of 257 miles. Mr. Musk said the Model X will come with a smaller battery pack than 90 kilowatt-hours, but he declined to say how much smaller. The price of the least expensive Model X will be about $5,000 more than the Model S, which starts at $75,000.

All of the Model X vehicles come standard with all-wheel drive.

Most of the technical features inside the car are the same as those in the Model S, including the 17-inch multimedia screen and the sensors covering the vehicle that will allow for autopilot driving on the highway when that feature is added through a software update in the near future.

Mr. Musk said he expects the Model X to get about half its sales from North America and the remainder from the rest of the world and for the SUV to sell in about the same number as the Model S.

Write to Mike Ramsey at michael.ramsey@wsj.com

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

September 30, 2015 00:25 ET (04:25 GMT)

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