Photo: Instagram screen capture
Tesla was faced with a strange situation last week when it presented the third-quarter sales figures: the three months period set a new all-time record for deliveries, but there still was an elephant in the room.
That would be the Model 3 production. 1,500 units of the new electric sedan were supposed to roll off the assembly line during that time, and yet the company missed the target by almost 80 percent. Instead of 15 hundred, only 260 were produced, with 220 of them delivered to their new owners.
Tesla blamed the situation on "production bottlenecks" but did not elaborate on what exactly was slowing down the process. However, with such a mammoth task ahead, people were willing to cut the company some slack and believe it would eventually find a way to reach the target figures.
Late last week, though, a new report surfaced claiming that the situation was so bad, Tesla had to create a special area inside the plant where workers would assemble certain parts by hand so the production wouldn't be halted completely.
Tesla did not confirm this information, but neither did it deny them. Instead, Elon Musk published a video on Instagram today showing the welding robots working on a Model 3 body on the assembly line. The text that came with the video only said the speed of the robots was down to 1/10th to allow workers to jump in if something went wrong.
As reassuring as it may be, the clip does nothing to disprove the claims surrounding the alleged temporary manual manufacturing that went on in Palo Alto. First of all, the report was referring to the start of September, so a working line at this time does not say much about the past. And second, there was no clear indication of what area of the production line was assembled, so for what we know, the problem could be ongoing.
Even so, this footage must be extremely welcome for all those reservation holders who can't wait to get their hands on the electric sedan. Tesla is supposed to reach 5,000 units per week by the end of the year, but we'll just have to wait and see whether these bottlenecks would put a dent in its plans.
Tesla blamed the situation on "production bottlenecks" but did not elaborate on what exactly was slowing down the process. However, with such a mammoth task ahead, people were willing to cut the company some slack and believe it would eventually find a way to reach the target figures.
Late last week, though, a new report surfaced claiming that the situation was so bad, Tesla had to create a special area inside the plant where workers would assemble certain parts by hand so the production wouldn't be halted completely.
Tesla did not confirm this information, but neither did it deny them. Instead, Elon Musk published a video on Instagram today showing the welding robots working on a Model 3 body on the assembly line. The text that came with the video only said the speed of the robots was down to 1/10th to allow workers to jump in if something went wrong.
As reassuring as it may be, the clip does nothing to disprove the claims surrounding the alleged temporary manual manufacturing that went on in Palo Alto. First of all, the report was referring to the start of September, so a working line at this time does not say much about the past. And second, there was no clear indication of what area of the production line was assembled, so for what we know, the problem could be ongoing.
Even so, this footage must be extremely welcome for all those reservation holders who can't wait to get their hands on the electric sedan. Tesla is supposed to reach 5,000 units per week by the end of the year, but we'll just have to wait and see whether these bottlenecks would put a dent in its plans.
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