Like the Model S and Model Y before it, Tesla’s ballyhooed Model 3 has been beset with production delays. Due to some manufacturing bottlenecks, Tesla last quarter only managed to manufacture 260 Model 3 units, a figure far below the 1,500 units Tesla initially projected early on.
In fact, the manufacturing issues plaguing the Model 3 were so significant that Elon Musk a few weeks ago pushed back Tesla’s Model 3 production goals by a few months. Under the new timeline, Tesla is hoping to manufacture 5,000 Model 3 vehicles per week by the first quarter of 2018, which effectively gives the company to the end of March to meet their goal.
That’s the bad news. The good news, though, is that production does seem to be picking up, a fact Musk himself alluded to not too long ago. To this point, Electrek reports that Tesla may start delivering Model 3 units to non-employee reservation holders as early as next week. Recall, early Model 3 reservations initially opened up to employees and other individuals with a close connection to the company.
With those orders seemingly taken care of, individual reservation holders with no affiliation to the company may take ownership of Tesla’s Model 3 sooner rather than later. Though nothing is official just yet, some on the Tesla subreddit are claiming that deliveries will begin as early as this coming Monday.
Regardless, it may take some time for existing reservation holders to get their hands on a Model 3. With the current reservation tally believed to be somewhere in the 400,000 range, many interested Model 3 buyers may not see Tesla’s mass market EV show up on their driveway until 2019 or even 2020.
