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Tesla Plans To Produce 500,000 Electric Cars In 2018, 1 Million In 2020 (reuters.com)
"Tesla Motors Inc said it was stepping up production plans for its upcoming Model 3 mass-market sedan and would build a total of 500,000 all-electric vehicles in 2018, two years ahead of schedule, but warned that spending will ramp up in tandem," reports Reuters. Tesla said capital spending would rise about 50% more than originally planned this year, to around $2.25 billion. Producing 500,000 vehicles in 2018 will be no easy task, especially considering the company is only on track to deliver between 80,000 and 90,000 electric vehicles this year. In addition to producing 500,000 electric vehicles in 2018, Elon Musk also said the company expects to produce nearly 1 million vehicles in 2020. These are certainly ambitious goals, even for a company that had the 'biggest one-week launch of any product ever.'
Okay, smart guy.
Tesla currently has Supercharger facilities (which I'm using as a convenient proxy for "countries it sells its vehicles to") in Australia, Western Europe, China, Japan, the USA, and Canada. Japan, in particular, has very strict regulations on cars that mean that its car fleet is generally very new; it's rare to see a car older than eight to ten years old on Japanese roads, and there would be a huge appeal in that country to buying an electrical vehicle, thanks to their stringent emissions controls. I'd expect the Model 3 to be a significant part of that country's market, early in the game.
Globally, car sales are over 74 million per annum. One million vehicles would represent about 1.35% of global vehicle sales - not an easy target to reach, but I think there's a reasonable chance they can do it, if they stick to a relatively conservative and well-understood (from an engineering point of view) design. The Model X's doors are a perfect example of how not to do it - sure, over time, they'll get better, but for a mass market vehicle, you want to keep it simple, keep it familiar, and thereby minimise the risks to the ramp-up. (That said, as the technology in the Model X is bedded down, it will probably find its way into other vehicles. I just don't think that the early model 3s would be the right place for it.)