Tesla achieves new record day of Model 3 production, but cutting it close for quarterly goal

There’s some good and bad in Tesla’s production numbers this week. The automaker was able to maintain really high production over several days, including a record Model 3 production day, but a significant production drop on Sunday resulted in still being behind its overall production goal.

We have been tracking Tesla’s production in the past few weeks of this critical period as the company is attempting to become profitable.

As we reported last week, Model 3 production increased to about 4,400 units last week after decreasing to ~3,100 units the week before that.

Now Model 3 production reached about 3,800 units this week (Friday to Friday), according to the same reliable source familiar with Tesla’s production.

It’s still much lower than where Tesla wanted to be (6,000 units per week), but there are still some good news.

Tesla achieved a new Model 3 production record of over 800 cars last Friday and they maintain production of more than 1,000 cars (Model S, Model X, and Model 3) for 2 days this week.

A significant drop in production to about 325 cars on Sunday appears to be responsible for the much lower overall numbers this week.

Overall production reached about 6,000 units this week – resulting in over 70,500 vehicles, including over 46,000 Model 3 vehicles, produced during the third quarter.

Tesla could achieve at least the lower-end of their Model 3 production guidance of 50,000 to 55,000 vehicles, but they would need to keep producing cars at their record pace, which they have had difficulties maintaining, if they want to achieve the higher-end in the next week.

Earlier this month, CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla is on track for “the most amazing quarter in their history”and that they are “building and delivering more than twice as many cars as they did last quarter.” Tesla said that it built 53,339 vehicles, including 28,578 Model 3’s last quarter.

Electrek’s Take

As usual, let me start by saying that no matter how you look at those numbers, Tesla is producing electric vehicles at an incredible rate, better than any legacy automaker, and that should be celebrated.

But it is also important that Tesla reaches its production goals in order for the company to become profitable and sustainable.

Therefore, we release those numbers to help our readers track the progress toward that goal.

Like I said, there’s good and bad in this week’s numbers. Tesla is definitely trending lower noe, which is going to make it extremely hard to achieve the higher-end of its production goal.

The lower-end is still achievable, but Tesla is going to have to maintain the higher production rate that it achieved over several days earlier this month.

I still think Tesla can get close to an overall production of 80,000 cars in the quarter, which would be extremely impressive.

We know that Tesla is going for its usual end-of-the-quarter delivery rush, but if it can also pull off an end-of-the-quarter production rush, we could get a surprise.

We will try to keep an even closer eye to production in the next week to get a better idea of the overall quarter.

if you know something about Tesla, you can reach out to me via wickr: fredev, Twitter: @FredericLambert, or email: fred@9to5mac.com.