May. 15th 2018 8:20 am

There are a lot of eyes on Tesla’s Model 3 production ramp right now as both investors and reservation holders are anxiously waiting for Tesla to reach a production rate of 5,000 vehicles per week by the end of the quarter after about 6 months of delays.

Now CEO Elon Musk says that they are making “great progress” as he believes it’s “quite likely” that they will exceed 500 cars per day this week – a 75% jump from last month.

In an email to employees obtained by Electrek today, the CEO wrote:

“It is looking quite likely that we will exceed 500 vehicles per day across all Model 3 production zones this week.”

He also requested that if anyone knows of “any specific bottlenecks” that would prevent Tesla from achieving that production rate, they should come to him in order to address the situation this week.

With production now running all week over 500 per day would add up to over 3,500 Model 3 vehicles per week.

Only a few weeks ago, Musk confirmed that Tesla was producing just over 2,000 Model 3 vehicles per week, but he also said that they have been working through some important bottlenecks that could result in significant production increases.

On May 2, he said:

“We got just in the last 24 hours at the Gigafactory managed to achieve a sustained rate of over 3,000 packs per week, and actually reached a peak hour with extrapolated outward would be a rate of about 5,000 cars per week.”

Battery pack production at Gigafactory 1 has long been one of the most important bottlenecks for Model 3 production, but it now sounds to be mostly fixed.

There are also a few issues at Tesla’s Fremont factory, where the Model 3 is assembled, but Musk said that Tesla was holding a hackathon to fix two problematic robot bottlenecks in Model 3 production last weekend.

It looks like those recent initiatives might be already having an impact if production is now close to 3,500 per week, as per Musk’s last email.

Electrek’s Take

Things are starting to look good for the 5,000 vehicles per week goal within the next two months.

While the production ramp seems to finally be hitting the good part of the S curve after months of delays, at this point, I am more impressed by the fact that Tesla is finding enough Model 3 reservation holders to buy 3,500 vehicles per week with only the current and more expensive configuration available.

I always thought that the bulk of the demand for the Model 3 was at closer to $40,000 with the standard battery pack, but it looks like many reservation holders are actually willing to pay a lot more.

And now things are going to get even more interesting if Tesla indeed opens Model 3 orders for the dual motor and performance versions by the end of the week.

It could turn out to be a very important week for Model 3 production.

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.

Subscribe to Electrek on YouTube for exclusive videos and subscribe to the podcast.