Tesla claims the reservations for its first mass-market car, the Model 3, have exceeded 325,000 and are still growing with no signs of slowing down. This posed a major challenge for the company as now it will have to meet two major targets on time. The first requires it to produce the number of vehicles registered, and the second is to meet its expedited goal of producing 500,000 vehicles by 2018, which is two years earlier than what the company had previously planned.
Musk committed to take Tesla to the top
Tesla CEO Elon Musk is putting in his best effort to meet those targets and become the top automaker. He is so dedicated that he even often sleeps in the factory. On Wednesday, the EV firm held its quarterly earnings call.
During the conference call, Musk said, “I have a sleeping bag … in the factory. My desk is at the end of the production line.”
This shows that he is extremely dedicated. Also to meet these goals, Musk said he needs the best manufacturing people in the world. The CEO said he is hiring people on the production side, and in the next few weeks, he will announce a number of hires.
A few hours before the call, Tesla also confirmed the departure of two of its top manufacturing executives: Greg Reichow, vice president of production, and Josh Ensign, vice president of manufacturing.
Model 3 production date set for July
Musk said that he has set a July 1 date for company staffers and external suppliers to begin production on the Model 3. He expects Tesla to once again miss this deadline, but he said that everyone should take the date seriously and that anyone who fails to meet that timeframe will face penalties, either internally or externally.
Musk said 93% of all Model 3 reservation holders are already having their first interactions with the company. In simple words, it can be said that future Model 3 owners are demographically very different from the company’s current customers.
For the first quarter, Tesla reported a loss of 57 cents per share on sales of $1.6 billion. Wall Street was expecting the company to report a loss of 56 cents on $1.6 billion in revenue. Though the company missed its goal of shipping 16,000 vehicles in the first quarter, Musk’s announcement about their accelerated production projections helped the automaker’s stock jump 4%. Musk even guessed that by 2020, the company may produce 1 million cars per year.
