To the surprise of many, Tesla this past June actually managed to meet its stated goal of manufacturing 5,000 Model 3 units per week. While Elon Musk initially claimed that Tesla would reach that production threshold by the end of 2017, early production was plagued by a number of issues. As you may recall, Musk blamed Tesla’s Model 3 production woes on excessive automation, a strategic misstep he took full accountability for.
“Yes, excessive automation at Tesla was a mistake,” Musk said via Twitter this past April. “To be precise, my mistake. Humans are underrated.”
Having met the 5,000 units per week threshold, Tesla recently said that its next goal was to boost Model 3 production up to 6,000 units per week by the end of August. While we’ll have to wait a few weeks before Tesla releases its official production figures for the quarter, a new report from Electrek claims that Tesla did not reach its production goal of 6,000 units per week. What’s more, the report claims that Tesla has been unable to even sustain the 5,000 units per production rate it hit in late June. To this point, Tesla reportedly manufactured 4,300 Model 3 units during the last week in August.
… based on the same reliable source familiar with Tesla’s production, the automaker built about 6,400 vehicles during the last week (last 7 days) of August (from 24th to 31st midday) including about 4,300 Model 3 vehicles.
That’s behind Tesla’s goal since the automaker previously disclosed that it was pushing for 6,000 units per week by the end of August.
Looking ahead, it will be interesting to see how Tesla frames Model 3 production in the months ahead. If anything, Tesla seems to be shooting itself in the foot by making somewhat ambitious production goals that it can’t quite meet.
