Ahead of Tesla officially confirming its production number for the first quarter 2018 this week, Elon Musk announced that the Model 3 production rate is now ‘over 2,000 units per week’ in an email sent to employees obtained by Electrek.
Musk wrote in the email:
“It has been extremely difficult to pass the 2000 cars per week rate for Model 3, but we are finally there. If things go as planned today, we will comfortably exceed that number over a seven-day period!”
The CEO added that Tesla is now “on a firm foundation for that output”, which means that they have a production rate of “4000 vehicles per week and climbing rapidly” between Model 3, Model S and Model X.
He noted that it’s already twice the production rate of last year and he now expects the automaker to exit the year by producing cars “at least four times faster than last year”.
As for the Model 3’s current output, it appears to still be below Tesla’s target of 2,500 units per week by the end of the first quarter, but it was a significant improvement over the last 12 weeks.
Electrek’s Take
That’s essentially my expectations as discussed last week on the podcast episode and previous posts.
It’s below Tesla’s target as I pointed out, 2,000 units per week is already equal to Model S and Model X production combined which took years to achieve.
Musk also pointed that out in the email today:
“It took five years to reach the 2000/week production rate for S and X combined, but only nine months to achieve that output with Model 3. Mind-blowing progress!”
But again, my biggest worry is Tesla pushing the target for 5,000 units per week by the end of Q2.
Musk now seems to expect a total production rate of “over” 8,000 units per week by the end of the year, which should mean about 6,000 Model 3 vehicles per week after discounting the Model S and Model X production from the total output.
We should get a clear idea of the targets later this week with the official numbers or during the Q1 earnings next month.
But I think this is great news for the Model 3 program since it shows Tesla increasing its production exponentially – something that we expected was happening with the increase rate of VIN registrations.
Tesla was reportedly only at about 1,400 units per week less than two weeks ago. If they managed to increase that by over 50% in just a few days, it’s starting to look at they are working through some bottlenecks.
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