OUCH: Tesla Posts $700 Million First-Quarter Loss as CEO Elon Musk Says It Will Offer Insurance.

Analysts expected that Tesla would lose in the neighborhood of 69 cents per share in the first quarter, but Tesla’s real numbers, released today, were much, much worse than that. Tesla lost $2.90 a share, or $702.1 million in the quarter, according to CNBC, almost as much as they lost in the same quarter last year, mostly because of falling demand. Things still aren’t looking up.

The falling demand, much more than the financial loss, is what will worry Tesla the most. That’s because Tesla always positioned the Model 3 to be the mass-market car that would drive profit at the company. But the $7,500 federal tax credit for Tesla started phasing out on January 1, and while the company still sold 63,000 cars this quarter, that was also below analysts’ expectations.

Tesla doesn’t have much time to waste in its effort to grow from boutique carmaker to mass producer, as the bigs here and overseas move big into electric over the next two to five years.