Everything isn’t as rosy as Tesla would like you to think.
The situation surrounding American EV manufacturer Tesla and its most affordable model yet, the Model 3 compact saloon, continues to worsen it seems. Reports have emerged that, contrary to a statement from the company back in November, not all is well and progressing smoothly on the Model 3 production line, with the “production bottlenecks” the company keeps citing being far worse than stated.
Tesla’s manufacturing facility, the Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, is still employing thousands of manufacturing staff to hand-assemble battery packs for the Model 3, sources claim. With over 400,000 pre-orders (each secured with a US$1,000 deposit), Tesla has resorted to “borrowing” staff from battery-supplier Panasonic’s workforce in the short-term to keep production moving as quickly as possible.
This paints a far darker picture than the one that CEO Elon Musk painted back in November, when he claimed that the company had been working through the bottlenecks at a steady pace. The success (and profitability) of the Model 3 hinges on the automation of the Gigafactory, though sources say that Tesla is nowhere near proper mass-production of the batteries themselves to make the entry-level US$35,000 variants of the 3 commercially viable.
CNBC cites shareholder updates and reports that by the end of last year, the company had only managed to deliver a total of less than 2,000 Model 3 saloons, a far cry from the 5,000/week target that Elon Musk mentioned a while back. That target, it seems, has been pushed back to June. Further, none of the basic entry-level models have been made as yet, with only the more expensive long-range bigger-battery units having rolled off the production line.
What this ultimately means for customers who might have placed deposits on a Model 3 is more delays, further than the wait time that we believe presently sits at well over a year.
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