Tesla close to meeting goal of 5,000 per week

Company expected to report production figures for last three months before July 4

It’s been another rough quarter for the roll-out of Tesla Inc’s Model 3. The factory was shut down at least twice for extensive upgrades, a new production line was hastily erected in a tent in the parking lot, and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk moved from sleeping on the couch to sleeping under the desk. He was even seen personally torquing bolts on an assembly line, alongside a summer intern.

Now the mad scramble to meet a self-imposed production deadline — a rate of 5,000 cars per week by the end of June — is coming to an end. The quarter concluded yesterday, and Tesla is expected to report its production figures for the last three months before the July 4 holiday. Tesla has repeatedly fallen short of its own manufacturing targets. Now investors will find out exactly how many cars Tesla made, sold and stockpiled — and what sort of weekly rate they were finally able to achieve.

Back in February, Bloomberg introduced an experimental tool to track the Model 3 roll-out. The tracker uses vehicle identification numbers (VINs) to estimate production in real time. The model projects that Tesla finished the quarter making 27,957 Model 3s — or 4,533 in the last week, shy of Musk’s goal. Since production of the Model 3 began in July 2017, the Bloomberg tracker estimates that 40,409 of the sedans have been made.

Musk himself has suggested that this estimate is too low. An analyst report by Goldman Sachs Group Inc prompted the CEO to send an email to his employees. “They are in for a rude awakening,” Musk wrote.