Elon Musk says Tesla can still achieve milestone of 500,000 cars in 2020, but will need to ‘go all out’

Elon Musk told Tesla employees in a new email obtained by Electrek that the automaker can still achieve its milestone of 500,000 electric cars delivered in 2020, but it will need to ‘go all out’ in order to achieve it.

Tesla is nearing the end of its end-of-year delivery push as it aims to deliver a record number of vehicles this quarter to achieve 500,000 deliveries in 2020 – a long-time goal for the automaker.

In order to achieve the milestone. Tesla has to deliver over 181,000 vehicles this quarter. That’s more than 40,000 vehicles over its last quarterly delivery record, which was just achieved last quarter.

Earlier this month, we reported on Musk telling Tesla employees that they are seeing strong demand this quarter to achieve the goal, but they need to increase production.

Now with just a few days left in the year, Musk sent another email to Tesla employees obtained by Electrek.

In the email, he seems to believe that the goal is still achievable and he motivates employees to rally around it to prove the doubters wrong:

“Please go all out to make it happen. This is a great milestone to rally the company around achieving. All the critics who, as recently as two years ago said that we’d never make it, also called our target of half a million in 2020 “impossible”. The heck with them, we are doing it!”

Musk is asking employees to help at the end-of-line in order to get more cars to customers at the very end of the quarter:

“Particular help would be appreciated at end of the line to ensure cars built now are able to be delivered immediately without any further improvements in PDI, as there simply isn’t enough time to do so.”

‘PDI’ likely refers to ‘pre-delivery inspection’. With only a few days left in the quarter, Tesla cannot expect to increase the efficiency of the inspection and instead hope to increase the capacity with more hands.

Those vehicles built at Fremont Factory and Gigafactory Shanghai would need a quick turnaround from the production line to the end customers to be counted as delivered in the fourth quarter.

Here’s the email in full:

After today, we just have 5 days to go to achieve the historic milestone of 500,000 cars built and delivered.

Please go all out to make it happen. This is a great milestone to rally the company around achieving. All the critics who, as recently as two years ago said that we’d never make it, also called our target of half a million in 2020 “impossible”. The heck with them, we are doing it!

Particular help would be appreciated at end of the line to ensure cars built now are able to be delivered immediately without any further improvements in PDI, as there simply isn’t enough time to do so.

Hope everyone was able to spend some time with loved ones this holiday season and has an amazing 2021.
Elon