Tesla (TSLA) is attempting to increase production by over 17% quarter-over-quarter to produce 500,000 vehicles total in 2020, according to CEO Elon Musk in a newly leaked email.
In a new email to employees, Musk stated that he sees Tesla reaching production of 500,000 vehicles in 2020:
“It will be tough but super exciting if we can exceed 500,000 cars made in a single year for the first time in Tesla history. 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.”
The CEO said that it will require an increase production output from Tesla in Q4.
“It all comes down to Q4. Please take whatever steps you can think of to improve output (while increasing quality).”
Tesla has produced just short 330,000 vehicles during the first three quarters of the year, meaning that it would need to produce 170,000 vehicles in Q4 alone to reach 500,000 vehicles produced in 2020.
The automaker just announced that it had record production of 145,000 cars in Q3.
Electrek’s Take
This is not to be confused with the production output exit rate at the end of the year.
Tesla already had a deployed production rate of over 600,000 vehicles at the end of Q2:
However, the pandemic has put a dent in Tesla’s 2020 production, and now, it has to catch up during the second half of the year.
Tesla would need to increase production quarter-over-quarter by almost 20% in order to achieve Elon’s goal of half a million cars.
That’s a massive increase in production over just three months.
It’s nice, but I wish the focus would be on quality before volume.
I do appreciate the mention of quality, but I feel like it comes after output for Tesla most of the time.
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