UPDATE: On Wednesday, January 3, Tesla revealed it has pushed back its production targets for the Model 3 sedan, yet again. In its latest Vehicle Production and Deliveries report, Tesla says it is focussing on quality and efficiency, rather than just pushing for the max volume in the shortest time, and so is aiming for a production speed of 2,500 Model 3s per week by March, and double that by the end of June. In a November investor call, CEO Elon Musk had said he wanted to build 5,000 of the cars per week by the end of March 2018—after originally promising to hit that number by the end of 2017. Tesla delivered just 1,550 Model 3s in the final quarter of last year. This story, about the difficulty of scaling up automobile production, originally ran on November 1, 2017.

If you are eagerly awaiting your Tesla Model 3, it might be time to download that meditation app, because you're gonna have to relax and get ready to wait. In the third quarter of 2017, Elon Musk's automaker delivered just 222 of the all-electric, affordable sedans. That's far fewer than it had promised, and puts just the tiniest of dents in the waiting list of 400,000 people who have paid $1,000 for a chance to buy the latest Tesla.

Musk had predicted that by the end of the year, the Model 3 production line would be humming along, cranking out 5,000 cars per week. In a Wednesday letter to investors, the company pushed that target back to March 2018. "In the grand scheme of things this is a relatively small shift," Musk said on a call, sounding tired but upbeat.

Now, the question for Tesla is whether customers and shareholders agree—and how much longer they'll keep the faith.

The feeble numbers can be traced back to the Nevada Gigafactory where Tesla builds batteries for the cars. An outside supplier responsible for part of the process of assembling batteries into modules, into packs, "dropped the ball," Musk says, and Tesla was forced to take the work in-house. "We had to rewrite all of the software from scratch and redo many of the mechanical and electrical elements," he says. "This is what I’ve spent many a late night at the gigafactory working on."

“They are making some big promises, and they need to show a path to get there,” says R. A. Farrokhnia, a business and engineering professor at Columbia University. The car business is notoriously tough, but building just a few cars, reportedly by hand, is not enough. Tesla has to convince investors there’s some forward momentum, and it will deliver on its promises. “Or they’re going to crash and burn at some point. Reality will catch up with them.”

The Hardest Working Man in Silicon Valley

Much of this “production hell,” to use Musk’s phrase, is his own making. The CEO regularly makes bold promises and overloads his to-do list, and seems to enjoy the heat. He recently Instagrammed a video of himself drinking, singing, making s'mores, and camping on the roof of the Gigafactory. He preferred camping out, he explained, to driving 30 minutes to and from the nearest hotel. Musk is a designer and engineer at heart, and enjoys being hands-on, problem solving.

Right now, Elon’s desk planner looks something like this: