It was never going to be easy to produce enough Tesla Model 3 vehicles to meet demand. At the launch of the $35,000 car that can go from 0 to 60 in 5.6 seconds, Elon Musk went as far as to warn about impending “manufacturing hell.” Time and again, the electric-car company has fallen behind on its production targets. But last month, Tesla promised that it would deliver on its Model 3 goals. With “the planned ramp of both Model 3 and our energy-storage products, our rate of revenue growth this year is poised to significantly exceed last year’s growth rate,” Tesla said in its quarterly earnings report, a relatively rosy outlook considering the company’s history.

Tesla bosses are now asking factory workers to help ramp up output of the Model 3 line. It would be an “incredible victory,” wrote engineering chief Doug Field in a memo obtained by Bloomberg, to reach Tesla’s production goals of assembling 2,500 Model 3 vehicles every week by the end of the quarter. Speaking of short-sellers and Tesla critics, Field said, “I find that personally insulting, and you should too . . . Let’s make them regret ever betting against us. You will prove a bunch of haters wrong.” He added: “The world is watching us very closely, to understand one thing: How many Model 3’s can Tesla build in a week?’

Because the company is ahead of its targets on the Tesla Model X and the Model S, the production of both models will be paused for the rest of the week, Peter Hochholdinger, Tesla’s vice president of production, told employees in another memo. Instead, a “limited number” of employees will be given the option to work on the Model 3 line on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, he wrote, adding that employees could also opt to use paid vacation days or take unpaid time off if they don’t move to the Model 3 line. (Tesla told Bloomberg that the shutdown of the production of the Model X and the Model S are only happening on Friday, and not Thursday and Friday, and aren’t related to Model 3 production targets.)

As Tesla employees push to produce 300-plus Model 3’s a day, Tesla on Thursday recalled 123,000 Model S vehicles over a potential power-steering failure that the company noted, in an e-mail to customers, “primarily makes the car harder to drive at low speeds.” The recall caused its stock to fall nearly 4 percent in after-hours trade. In his memo, Field implored workers to keep quality standards high. “This is a critical moment in Tesla’s history, and there are a number of reasons it’s so important,” he wrote. “You should pick the one that hits you in the gut and makes you want to win.”