At the beginning of this year, Tesla said it had a solid chance of delivering half a million cars to customers. Even in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and its calamitous effect on new car sales, CEO Elon Musk told employees via e-mail that it still had a shot at reaching that target, according to a Reuters report. “This all comes down to Q4,” he said Wednesday. “Please take whatever steps you can think of to improve output (while increasing quality).” The e-mail originally leaked from Tesmanian earlier in the day.
So, where does the company stand right now. In the third quarter, they delivered a record 139,300 vehicles. That was preceded by 90,650 deliveries in Q2 and 88,400 deliveries in Q1. To make that 500,000 target at the end of 2020, Tesla needs to deliver 181,650 more cars. In pursuit of that goal, Tesla has pushed its Fremont and Shanghai plants to boost production. The Shanghai plant opened in December 2019, and sims to produce 150,000 Model 3 sedans this year. Thanks to both the Model 3 and the Model Y, the automaker finds itself in a position scarcely imaginable a decade ago.
“When we started Tesla just over 16 years ago, I never thought we would get this far, but, thanks to your hard work and ingenuity, we actually have a chance of making half a million cars in a single year. Wow, that is so incredible!”, Musk reportedly said in the recent internal e-mail.
Tesla stock rose over 3% throughout the day Wednesday, trading at over $428 per share.
