Can Tesla Production Hit 30,000 Model 3s for the Quarter?  2,237 VINs Registered

After an eerily quiet week, Tesla registered 2,237 Model 3 VINs today, data collected by @Model3VINs show.

Yesterday, Goldman Sachs reiterated its sell rating on Tesla, arguing that the electric car maker will miss it quarterly production goal by a mile.

“Goldman analyst David Tamberrino expects the company to report it delivered 22,000 units of its Model 3 mid-size electric sedan, which is up from his previous estimate of 19,000 cars, but still several thousand units below an analyst consensus of 28,000. ” – CNBC

But Mr. Tamberrino is only talking about deliveries and not production numbers. Deliveries will always lag production by a mile.  In my earlier article, I made the case for Tesla building 30,000 Model 3s in the second quarter of 2018.

At the end of first quarter 2018, Tesla reported that the company produced 2,020 Model 3 vehicles in the last week of March.

If peak Model 3 production has already reached 2000/wk at the end of first quarter, how hard will it be for Tesla to build 24,000 Model 3s over a 12 week period. To be exact, there are 91 days in the second quarter of 2018 and 2020/wk production capacity will get Tesla to sail over 25,000 cars during the quarter.

But Tesla also had to shut down operations twice in the last three months to help ramp up production. These temporary shutdowns will certainly hurt overall production numbers, but the ramp up should help compensate for it.

Even if we assume the shutdown periods to cancel out the ramp up periods, Tesla should still be in a position to cross 25K production for the quarter, unless there is a major supply side bottleneck. That didn’t happen, because if it did, the bears would have made sure that we all knew about it.

The only news that came out this week on the supply side was Panasonic saying that they are getting juiced out because Tesla is eating up all their charge.

“A pickup in production of Tesla Inc’s Model 3 cars, after earlier delays, has resulted in occasional battery cell shortages, a Panasonic Corp official said on Thursday in a sign Tesla is in overdrive to meet its end-June forecast.” – Reuters June 28, 2018

With no known supply side issues and battery production/consumption in the Gigafactory good enough to stretch Panasonic, the only question we have is, how much more Tesla can add on top of the 25,000 units?

I am sticking to my earlier prediction (June, 21 2018) of Tesla Model 3 production reaching 30,000 units for the quarter. I hope Tesla breaks my calculations.

Why did Tesla slash Model 3 price this week, if they are struggling to ramp up? It makes no sense. It’s a well known secret that you need to bring the price down to capture more volume. There are people still on the waiting list – but the further Tesla keeps moving the price down, the more the reservation holders will rush to configure their cars. Tesla is hitting volumes, that’s why the price cut.

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