Just one day after speculating on the amount of produced and delivered vehicles Tesla would be reporting for its third quarter, we have the answer. According to a press release put out by Tesla this morning, Tesla produced 80,142 vehicles, 50% more than its prior all-time high. The press release press release
53,239 Model 3 vehicles, which was in line with our guidance and almost double the volume of Q2. During Q3, we transitioned Model 3 production from entirely rear wheel drive at the beginning of the quarter to almost entirely dual motor during the last few weeks of the quarter. This added significant complexity, but we successfully executed this transition and ultimately produced more dual motor than rear wheel drive cars in Q3. In the last week of the quarter, we produced over 5,300 Model 3 vehicles, almost all of which were dual motor, meaning that we achieved a production rate of more than 10,000 drive units per week.
26,903 Model S and X vehicles, which was slightly higher than Q2 and in line with our full-year guidance.
Visually:
How does the Model 3 production of 53,239 compare to estimates? It was somewhat better than Wall Street consensus 50,416 but just below Bloomberg’s Model 3 tracker estimate of 53,457.
Putting these numbers in context, in the last week of the quarter, Tesla hit its long-standing target of 5,000 Model 3 cars a week according to Bloomberg. For the quarter, production of a little more than 53,000 means about 4,000 cars a week.
Recall that Tesla CEO Elon Musk had pulled out all of the stops in the last couple of weeks to hit sales and production goals. So it remains to be seen if Tesla’s outdoor assembly line is consistently hitting 5,000 of the Model 3 every week. Also it remains to be seen if the current production pace will result in a quarterly profit.
The biggest “beat” for the company was the number of deliveries, which came in well above expectations, at 83,500.
