Electric Automaker Tesla Hits Milestone, Builds 5,000 Model 3's Last Week

author: Eric Walz   

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been promising to built 5,000 of its mass market Model 3 electric cars each week since since the company began producing the cars last summer. At 5:00am Sunday morning, Tesla finally reached its goal.

Two Tesla employees told Reuters that the 5000th Model 3 passed its final inspection in the wee hours of Sunday morning, just hours after Musk's self-imposed deadline of June 30—an important milestone for the electric car company.

Shortly after the news was reported, Elon Musk tweeted that Tesla's total production reached 7,000 units, which included the 5,000 Model 3's and 2,000 units of the Model S and Model X.

Musk initially promised to produce 5,000 Model 3's per week by December of last year.

When the company failed to reach that goal, Musk pushed that goal six months ahead to June. Musk said in March that Tesla would finally reach its goal of building 5,000 Model 3's per week by the end of June.

Tesla hastily constructed a large tent structure about the size of two football fields at it Fremont factory to expand its Model 3 assembly line to support the production ramp up. The building permits were approved on June 13. Musk announced it on Twitter on June 16, saying the company had put together an "entire new general assembly line" in three weeks with spare parts.

Musk has been under pressure from shareholders to deliver the Model 3, its first mass-market electric car vital to the reaching profitability. Since Musk announced that Tesla would begin taking deposits for the Model 3 in March of 2017, over 400,000 people paid $1000 to reserve one. However, Tesla has struggled to hit its production targets since until now. Tesla said it delivered just 8,180 Model 3's in the first quarter of this year.

It's not clear if Tesla can keep up this production pace in Q2, or even next week, for that we'll have to wait and see. In April, Musk said he's been sleeping at Tesla's Fremont, California putting in extra hours to tackle some of Tesla's production issues.

Eric Walz

Originally hailing from New Jersey, Eric is a automotive & technology reporter covering the high-tech industry here in Silicon Valley. He has over 15 years of automotive experience and a bachelors degree in computer science. These skills, combined with technical writing and news reporting, allows him to fully understand and identify new and innovative technologies in the auto industry and beyond. He has worked at Uber on self-driving cars and as a technical writer, helping people to understand and work with technology.