Tesla has a lot riding on the Model 3. It’s the first mass-market electric car that the company has ever released. Tesla was aiming to produce more than 1,600 units of the Model 3 by September this year as it gradually ramps up production to fill hundreds of thousands of orders. Unfortunately, it has missed its own prediction by miles.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in July that the first 30 customers would receive their Model 3 cars later that month. He mentioned that production will be ramped up “exponentially” and that the company should produce 100 units in August and above 1,500 Model 3 units in September.
That’s not the case, though. Tesla has reported that it only produced 260 units of the Model 3 in the third quarter. Musk’s previous predictions meant that Tesla should have produced at least 1,630 units in the third quarter. Compare that to the 260 it actually produced and it’s missed the prediction by 84 percent.
So why wasn’t the company able to produce units as quickly as it would have wanted? Tesla says that the Model 3 production was less than anticipated because of “production bottlenecks.” It also mentioned that several manufacturing subsystems at its California factory and Nevada battery plant have taken longer to come online than previously anticipated.
Tesla also added that there are no fundamental issues with the Model 3 supply chain or production so things should improve in the coming months, hopefully. Tesla produced 25,336 electric cars combined in the third quarter, a 1.5 percent decline compared to 25,708 vehicles produced in the second quarter.
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