One of the bigger stories involving Tesla this year — aside from Elon Musk’s shenanigans on Twitter, of course — has centered on Model 3 production. Indeed, one of the reasons why Tesla’s ability to ramp up Model 3 production has drawn so much scrutiny over the past few months is because Musk has a bad habit of making ambitious promises regarding production that often go unfulfilled. If you recall, Musk initially promised that Model 3 production would reach 5,000 units per week by the end of 2017, a goal that Tesla didn’t come anywhere close to making.
Tesla eventually did reach its 5,000 unit/week milestone this summer, a good few months later than expected. During the company’s most recent quarter, the company noted that average Model 3 production checked in at 4,300 units per week. More specifically, Model 3 production during the last week of the September quarter checked in at 5,300 units.
Looking ahead, Tesla remains committed to boosting Model 3 production and has seemingly worked around any number of production bottlenecks. To this point, Electrek reports that the electric automaker is now aiming to boost production to 7,000 units per week before the end of the month. The 7,000 figure comes via an internal email sent by Musk wherein the Tesla CEO relays that he wants production to reach 1,000 units per day.
Musk’s email reads in part:
By the 28th, all Model 3 production subsytems need to be at 50+ UPH steady, which is what’s needed for a true 1000 vehicles per day rate (taking equipment uptime into account). To be clear, this includes all lines for a particular subsystem, so, for example, general assembly UPH would include both GA3 lines plus GA4.
Of course, it remains to be seen if Tesla can actually achieve this. While the company can pull out all the stops and have an incredibly high production rate in any given week, history has shown that keeping such production levels consistent across many weeks is far more challenging. In any event, Musk at the very least has learned to keep his ambitious projections internal as opposed to blabbing about them on Twitter.
