Tesla is telling customers it will deliver the Model X, its long-awaited, next-generation electric vehicle (EV), early next year.

The car maker hadn't made an official announcement about the 2015 availability of its crossover utility vehicle (CUV) as of Monday, but was reportedly sending emails to customers saying as much.

Tesla's emails to customers said the company "expects prototypes of the Model X to be built by the end of this year, with deliveries starting early in 2015," CNN Money reported.

The company unveiled the Model X, a blending of SUV and minivan with distinctive "falcon wing" rear doors, back in February 2012. Later that month, Tesla racked up a whopping $40 million in preorder reservations for the Model X in a single day.

The Model X will be the first new EV from Tesla since the 2012 arrival of its first all-electric sedan, the best-selling Model S. The new car will reportedly have a base price of $55,000, making it slightly more affordable than the Model S, which starts at $62,400.

Tesla originally projected the first deliveries of Model X vehicles to arrive this year. Reserving a Model X requires a $5,000 deposit for the standard model and a $40,000 deposit for the Signature model.

Tesla's first all-electric CUV features three rows of seats, seven in total, and a new dual-motor, all-wheel drive system. But what really stands out on the Model X are the crossover vehicle's unusual, falcon-wing side doors, which Tesla decided were a better fit than conventional or sliding doors commonly found on minivans.

The Model X sports doors hinged at the roof like the gull-wing doors made famous by the DeLorean DMC-12, but with an extra hinge that allows them to be opened in tighter quarters.

"Conventional doors [are] not great for accessing the second and third row with kids, and sliding doors don't really open wide enough, so we were looking for a different way," Tesla chief designer Franz von Holzhausen said last November. "So we went with a gull-wing type design, but with a double actuated hinge, which lets you open the doors in a parking lot without hitting car next to you."

The Model X is built upon the same full-size sedan platform as the Model S but features an interior that's tweaked slightly from Tesla's award-winning EV. The newer vehicle will feature the same 17-inch touch-screen control panel situated between driver and front-seat passenger on the dashboard, but it will reportedly also add a pair of small touch-screen control panels on the steering wheel as well.

"The idea was to create a more functional vehicle [than the Model S]," von Holzhausen said about the Model X, which will weigh about 10 percent more than the Model S and offer minivan seating capacity with Tesla's stylish touch.

"Nobody really wants to own a minivan, right? But you do it because you have to. So maybe you move to an SUV or crossover, but those really aren't as functional as a minivan. So the Model X is trying to provide functionality of minivan but in an attractive package," he said.

Meanwhile, Tesla is also developing its third-generation EV platform for "an Audi A4, BMW 3-series, Volkswagen Jetta-type of vehicle" possibly arriving in 2016, Tesla vice president of worldwide sales and customer experience George Blankenship said in early 2013. Tesla has indicated it hopes the first of those EVs, code named BlueStar, could be priced as low as $30,000.

Tesla also made the news recently with a pledge to not file any lawsuits against companies that wants to use its patented technology for electric vehicles, essentially open-sourcing its EV intellectual property.

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