Tesla CEO Elon Musk managed to send his Tesla Roadster into space[1], because why not, earlier this week — and it looks like his week (and Tesla’s) is still looking up for now following the company’s fourth-quarter results.
The company slightly beat Wall Street’s expectations on the financial front, and said it’s still targeting producing 2,500 Model 3 vehicles by the end of the first quarter. Tesla previously stated this target, but as it starts to ramp up a new vehicle that’s geared toward a larger market, it’s had to deal with the production headaches that come with that. The company still said that it’s not an exact science regarding that target, but it didn’t seem to tune down the expectations, and the stock was slightly up as a result. What’s probably more important is that it’s not spiraling downward (yet), which means Wall Street at first blush is alright with what it sees and is going to continue to be patient with the company.
“We continue to target weekly Model 3 production rates of 2,500 by the end of Q1 and 5,000 by the end of Q2,” Tesla said in its statement. “It is important to note that while these are the levels we are focused on hitting and we have plans in place to achieve them, our prior experience on the Model 3 ramp has demonstrated the difficulty of accurately forecasting specific production rates at specific points in time. What we can say with confidence is that we are taking many actions to systematically address bottlenecks and add capacity in places like the battery module line where we have experienced constraints, and these actions should result in our production rate significantly increasing during the rest of Q1 and through...