Tesla Misses its August Model 3 Production Rate Goal

Tesla has missed their 6,000 Model 3 per week goal that they set out to achieve by the end of August, according to a new report out by the Tesla-friendly bloggers over at electrek. 

Despite missing this goal for August, the obligatory "carrot on a string" followed immediately, as the same article then stated that Tesla is on track to meet its overall third-quarter production goals. Tesla has been targeting overall production of 50,000 to 55,000 Model 3 vehicles for the third quarter.

With that being said, we are still only about 70% of the way through the quarter, so there is still plenty of time for force majeure events like cardboard fires, saboteur ex employees, or the CEO stopping the assembly line in order to headbutt more of his vehicles. These are simply the acts of God that you just can’t plan on, and a lot can happen over four weeks.

Tesla reportedly built about 6,400 vehicles during the last seven days of August. However, only 4,300 of those turned out to be Model 3s – and there is no word as to how many of these vehicles may have to be "reworked" and how many of them were ready to be delivered to customers. Recall, we brought to light a Business Insider article about two weeks ago that claimed that only 14% of 5,000 Model 3s that came off the line during the last week of June didn't need to be reworked in some way.

Regardless of how many vehicles were able to go to customers and how many were just "factory gated", the 4,300 number is far behind the company‘s goal of 6,000 units per week by the end of August.

Later in the article, after electrek had already proclaimed in the title that the company is "on track for [its] overall Q3 goal", it then appears to qualifies that statement by stating that production for the quarter is simply "trending toward Tesla's quarterly goal".

It was reported that the company has produced about 53,000 total vehicles and over 34,700 Model 3 vehicles in Q3, as of the start of September. To meet the low end of its target range, the company would need to make 15,300 Model 3 vehicles before the end of September, or around 3,825 Model 3s per week. 

Despite the company reportedly being on track to reach this goal, it is still trying to exceed it by increasing its production to 6,000 units per week.

And stop us if you’ve heard this one before: electrek goes on to conclude that non-descript "production issues" over the past two months not only explain the company missing its August target, but also explain delivery delays for Model 3s. Finally, the pro-Tesla blog makes what could arguably be its most important declaration, in stating “As a reminder production doesn’t equal deliveries."

We wonder if that line will be used against them at some point in the future.