Tesla struggling with Model3 production

Tesla's Q3 vehicle delivery report showed deliveries of only 220 Model 3s with only 260 being produced.

The company blamed the low count on ''production bottlenecks'' and stated,

''Although the vast majority of manufacturing subsystems at both our car plant and our Nevada Gigafactory are able to operate at high rate, a handful have taken longer to activate than expected.''

According to commentators, while this made it sound as if there were only isolated problems in the production chain and that most of it is working to plan, an article yesterday in The Wall Street Journal paints a different picture.

''Unknown to analysts, investors and the hundreds of thousands of customers who signed up to buy it, as recently as early September major portions of the Model 3 were still being banged out by hand, away from the automated production line, according to people familiar with the matter.''

''While the car's production began in early July, the advanced assembly line Tesla has boasted of building still wasn't fully ready as of a few weeks ago, the people said. Tesla's factory workers had been piecing together parts of the cars in a special area while the company feverishly worked to finish the machinery designed to produce Model 3's at a rate of thousands a week, the people said.''

Meanwhile, Tesla's third-quarter delivery numbers though impressive are depressing, as the company is on track to sell 100,000 vehicles in a year for the  first time in its 14-year history.

However, according to commentators, it is far, far behind with the production of its new Model 3 sedan, the vehicle that is expected to bring Tesla to the masses and mark the beginning of the end for gas-powered cars.

According to commentators, getting to a monthly production of 20,000 by December now seems like a hopeless expectation, as also Musk's prediction that Tesla will be manufacturing 500,000 vehicles annually by the end of 2018.