It’s an interesting time for Tesla, to say the least. At the same time that Elon Musk finds himself the target of an SEC securities fraud lawsuit, the electric automaker appears to be ramping up Model 3 production in a major way. If you recall, early Model 3 production fell far short of Tesla’s projections as the company struggled to work around any number of manufacturing bottlenecks. Ultimately, Musk took the blame, explaining that the company relied too heavily upon automation.
Since then, the company has slowly but surely increased Model 3 production, even reaching a 5,000 unit/week production rate last quarter, if only for a short period of time. As to how Model 3 production stands today, Electrek is reporting that Tesla during the September quarter managed to manufacture more than 51,000 units, just barely eclipsing the lower-end of the company’s Model 3 production goal for the quarter.
What’s more, Tesla reportedly managed to hit the 5,000 unit/week production threshold this quarter. This is particularly noteworthy given some of the skepticism we’ve seen surrounding Tesla’s ability to sustain that production rate.
“Tesla was able to maintain production of about 1,100 cars per day over four days this week and about 800 Model 3’s per day over three of those days,” the report adds. “It’s one of the highest levels of production that Tesla was ever able to maintain.”
We’ll obviously have more precise information once Tesla releases its earnings report for the quarter in late October. Until then, there’s mounting evidence that Model 3 production trending upward, with Goldman Sachs analyst David Tamberrino recently stating that Model 3 production could hit 52,000 units once the quarter comes to a close.
Incidentally, Musk in a blog post earlier this month said that Tesla is “about to have the most amazing quarter in our history, building and delivering more than twice as many cars as we did last quarter.”
