Tesla Produced Over 80,000 Cars In Third Quarter, Beating Estimates (electrek.co)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: Tesla has now confirmed the official record production numbers of 80,000 vehicles. The automaker has also confirmed Q3 deliveries of 83,500 vehicles. Yesterday, Electrek reported the production numbers, which Tesla has now confirmed to be exactly 53,239 Model 3 vehicles and 26,903 Model S and X vehicles. Tesla elaborated on the Model 3 production ramp-up: "During Q3, we transitioned Model 3 production from entirely rear wheel drive at the beginning of the quarter to almost entirely dual motor during the last few weeks of the quarter. This added significant complexity, but we successfully executed this transition and ultimately produced more dual motor than rear wheel drive cars in Q3. In the last week of the quarter, we produced over 5,300 Model 3 vehicles, almost all of which were dual motor, meaning that we achieved a production rate of more than 10,000 drive units per week." Tesla delivered a total of 83,500 vehicles during the third quarter: 55,840 Model 3, 14,470 Model S, and 13,190 Model X.

Here's what Tesla had to say about the Model 3 deliveries: "Our Q3 Model 3 deliveries were limited to higher-priced variants, cash/loan transactions, and North American customers only. There remain significant opportunities to grow the addressable market for Model 3 by introducing leasing, standard battery and other lower-priced variants of the car, and by starting international deliveries."

Comments

Interested to see the long-term quality

[crgrace]

I have a coworker who is from the former USSR. His take on Tesla is that the current output is gonna suck and warranty repair is going to eat them alive. He tells me that at the end of the fiscal year often factories would be under pressure in the USSR to up their output, and no one wanted what they made (which wasn't actually good quality to begin with).

I have a good friend who just got a Model 3 a few weeks ago. She needs warranty service (not Tesla's fault in this case, a pinecone fell on the car and smashed the roof glass) and can't get an appointment for months. Not sure if this is a lack of spare parts or if they are flooded with warranted work. By the way, she let me drive the car and it is a LOT of fun.

Re:Incomplete data, bad news.

[Rei]

Wouldn't be surprised if they do it even sooner. After transportation, their next bottleneck is going to be cell production; Tesla's growth has outpaced Panasonic's ability to provide cells. They're trying to get three new lines online at Giga as soon as possible, but it'll take months. When cells are the limiting factor, it makes sense to switch to SRs so you can make more vehicles with a limited volume of cells. Well optioned out SRs surely first, of course, but SRs nonetheless.