Tesla Model 3 Production Prompts Elon Musk to Go 'Back to Sleeping at Factory'
Tesla may have missed its initial production target, but CEO Elon Musk is not giving up his goals for the highly anticipated electric car just yet. The billionaire tweeted that he's now back to sleeping in at the factory floor, and so far, the extra push looks to be paying off.
The carmaker was able to meet their first target in time last year for the roll-out of the first production models of the Model 3, as the first units of the massively popular electric car rolled out in early July of 2017. This early success may have prompted Musk at the time to look forward to a quick start before 2018 rolls around.
"Looks like we can reach 20,000 Model 3 cars per month in Dec," the Tesla CEO tweeted at that time. That estimate turned out to be a tad too optimistic, as 2017 came and went with Tesla still struggling to fill the massive pre-order numbers for the Model 3.
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Musk has since tamped down on his enthusiastic estimate, and Tesla is now aiming for 2,500 cars per week, or around 10,000 brand new Model 3 units a month. A recent statement from Tesla showed that their factories have produced 2,020 Model 3 cars over the past seven days — still a bit short of the Tesla founder's revised goals, but a marked improvement from last year's output.
A report from The Information via Electrek, alleged that according to two sources, Tesla's continuing struggle to reach its target prompted Elon Musk to personally take over the manufacturing process from Doug Field, senior vice president of engineering for Tesla. Musk could not pass up reacting to the way the story was framed.
"Can't believe you're even writing about this. My job as CEO is to focus on what's most critical, which is currently Model 3 production. Doug, who I regard as one of the world's most talented engineering execs, is focused on vehicle engineering," Musk tweeted on Tuesday, April 3.
"About a year ago, I asked Doug to manage both engineering & production. He agreed that Tesla needed eng & prod better aligned, so we don't design cars that are crazy hard to build," he added, taking full advantage of Twitter's longer character limit to explain the situation.
"Right now, tho, better to divide & conquer, so I'm back to sleeping at factory. Car biz is hell," he concluded. Hell or not, Musk is toughing it out on the factory floor just like the last time when the company was going through production ramps for the Model X.
Sleeping on the job may not be healthy, but for Tesla's push to get up to speed churning out Model 3s, the results have been well worth it. In the first quarter, Tesla's factory averaged about 800 per week, and last week's 2,020 unit count is already well on its way to tripling that, as Wired pointed out.
"This is the fastest growth of any automotive company in the modern era. If this rate of growth continues, it will exceed even that of Ford and the Model T," he noted to investors about their recent progress towards rolling out the Model 3 to their hundreds of thousands of excited owners.
