Tesla would have reached the number of hours of manufacture of model 3 after its deadline

Tesla barely missed its goal of producing 5,000 model 3 electric cars a week, according to Reuters which says the company reached the mark "several hours after the midnight goal", while Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Twitter that the company had manufactured 7,000 vehicles in a week.

Reuters spoke with two factory workers who say that the last vehicle completed its "final quality checks" around 5am Sunday morning, just before the midnight deadline set by Musk early June. According to Electrek a Tesla employee posted a celebratory photo on Twitter after the end of the last car. Tesla is expected to officially release its numbers for its second quarter in the coming week.

"We have not only crossed the 5000 copies of the model 3, but we have also reached the S & X production goal for a combined week 7000 vehicles! " , in an email to all employees obtained by Bloomberg . "Plus, with the widespread productivity gains across Tesla and the new production lines, we're on track to reach 6K / week for Model 3 next month," the e-mail continues. "I think we just became a real car company."

Tesla The electric car company hopes that the cheaper vehicle will be largely adopted by consumers, and thus help to make the company profitable and realize Musk's dream of widely adopting electric vehicles. However, the road was not easy: it missed its target of 5,000 vehicles per week at the end of 2017 and its objective of 2,500 vehicles per week in the first quarter, even after accelerating production earlier this year. year. Part of the problem was Tesla 's excessive reliance on automation in his Fremont, California plant, which caused bottlenecks and production delays.

However, while Tesla did not quite achieve its second quarter goal, it was close to what it was before – in April, it was producing only 2,000 of the 2,500 cars that he hoped to produce. This is due in part to the huge ramp-up of production which included the construction of a third line of assembly outside the factory and the continued DIY of the vehicle design to optimize the construction of the vehicle. second-quarter production goal, the question now is whether the company can support and develop this pace to meet the demand of the car. We reached out to Tesla for comment and will update if we hear back.

Update July 2, 4:20 am ET : An earlier version of this article accidentally indicated that Tesla's first quarter production target was 25,000 vehicles: it was 2,500 The article has also been updated to include Musk's tweet and e-mail to employees.