Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk speaks next to the company's newest Model S during the Model S Beta Event held at the Tesla factory in Fremont, California October 1, 2011. The Model S is the company's first full-size electric sedan set for release in 2012. REUTERS/Stephen Lam Tesla's holiday news dump is out.

On Friday morning, Tesla announced that in the first quarter of the year, vehicle deliveries rose 55% to 10,030, a new record for the company.

Tesla had forecast that it would sell 9,500 vehicles in the quarter.

In a release, Tesla said:

Tesla Motors (NASDAQ: TSLA) delivered 10,030 cars in Q1 of 2015, which is a new company record for the most deliveries in a quarter and represents a 55% increase over Q1 last year.

Going forward, Tesla will publish the number of new car deliveries within three days of quarter end. We have decided to take this approach, because inaccurate sources of information are sometimes used by others to project the number of vehicle deliveries.

There may be small changes to this delivery count (usually well under 1%), as Tesla only counts a delivery if it is transferred to the end customer and all paperwork is correct.

Also, this is only one measure of our financial performance and should not be relied on as an indicator of our quarterly financial results, which depend on a variety of factors, including the cost of sales, foreign exchange movements and mix of directly leased vehicles.

Markets were closed on Friday for Good Friday.

Tesla shares closed Thursday's trading up 1.8%, at $191 per share.

So far this year, shares of Tesla are down 14%.