Elon Musk confident Tesla production in 2020 can still hit 500,000 cars

Tesla built 145,036 cars in the third quarter of 2020 and delivered 139,300 in the same timeframe. The Palo Alto-based company had a record quarter, but Q4 needs to be even better for the EV marque to hit reach its goal of 500,000 cars built and delivered in a year. Head honcho Elon Musk is confident the target is still attainable, even though it must deliver more than 40,000 vehicles compared to the previous quarter.

The 49-year-old businessman sent an e-mail to Tesla employees, encouraging them to make one final effort this year to achieve the ambitious objective. Electrek managed to get a hold of that alleged e-mail, which quotes Elon Musk saying:

“Please go all out to make it happen. This is a great milestone to rally the company around achieving. All the critics who, as recently as two years ago said that we’d never make it, also called our target of half a million in 2020 ‘impossible.’ The heck with them, we are doing it!”

It’s crunch time for Tesla as the end of the year is right around the corner and hitting 500,000 cars would prove naysayers wrong. Manufacturing the cars necessary to hit that mark only solves half the problem as they also must be shipped to their owners as soon as possible. For this reason, the company’s CEO is asking employees working at the end of the assembly line to make sure everything is in order since there’s no time to fix any issues that might be detected during the pre-delivery inspection.

It’s worth pointing out the cars currently being made are only the Model 3 and Model Y as the bigger and more expensive Model S and Model X are on a hiatus. Production of the two high-end vehicles was paused on December 24 and won’t be resumed until January 11. It is believed the temporary shutdown has to do with an impending styling update for the duo, but that remains to be seen. In the meantime, Tesla is busy churning out the cheaper EVs.

Source: Electrek