It’s no secret that Tesla has something of a long history of over-promising and under-delivering. Indeed, every single car Tesla has ever made has been subject to extremely long production delays. Consequently, many people were understandably skeptical of Tesla’s claim that it would be able to manufacture 5,000 Model 3 units per month by the end of June.
Well, as it turns out, Tesla managed to do just that. In a regulatory filing made earlier today, Tesla revealed that it produced 5,031 Model 3 units during the last week of the June quarter, just barely meeting the company’s goal in the nick of time.
In an internal memo penned by Musk, and obtained by Bloomberg, the Tesla CEO was understandably overjoyed.
We did it!! What an incredible job by an amazing team. Couldn’t be more proud to work with you. It is an honor.
The level of dedication and creativity was mind-blowing. We either found a way or, by will and inventiveness, created entirely new solutions that were thought impossible.
…
I think we just became a real car company.
Beyond the current quarter, Musk noted that Tesla is on track to manufacture upwards of 6,000 Model 3 vehicles per week sometime this month. In short, it appears that Tesla has emphatically worked around previous production bottlenecks and may finally start putting a dent in a backlog of reservations that likely falls somewhere in or around the 400,000 range. As a point of comparison, Tesla towards the end of the March quarter was producing an estimated 1,400 Model 3 units per week.
It’s also worth mentioning that Tesla over the last 7 days manufactured 7,000 vehicles, a tally which includes the Model 3, the Model S, and the Model X. Musk celebrated the milestone with a short message on Twitter.
7000 cars, 7 days
♥️ Tesla Team ♥️— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2018
For the entire quarter, Tesla produced 53,339 vehicles, representing a more than 50% increase compared to the March quarter. Looking ahead, Tesla’s claim that it may finally turn a quarterly profit before 2019 might actually pan out.
