Tesla China is on track to achieve yet another milestone in its Gigafactory Shanghai facility. In a recent interview with local media outlet Xinhua News, Tesla Global VP Tao Lin stated that the electric car maker is poised to achieve a production rate of 4,000 Model 3 per week in its Shanghai-based facility as early as the end of June.
Gigafactory Shanghai’s 4,000 per week Model 3 production target has been shared in the Q1 2020 Update Letter, with the company stating that the target output will likely be reached sometime in the middle of the year. If the Tesla VP’s statements prove accurate, the electric car maker would be poised to hit its aspirational goals perfectly.
Producing 4,000 Model 3 per week by the end of June is no joke, considering the challenges that were faced by Tesla when it was ramping the electric sedan’s production in the United States. During the Model 3 ramp in Fremont, the progression from a production rate of 2,500 units per week to 5,000 units per week took a significant amount of time and a lot of pain on Elon Musk’s part.
In comparison, the Model 3 ramp in Gigafactory Shanghai seems to be progressing smoothly. The facility started producing trial units of the Model 3 less than a year since the facility’s groundbreaking, and by January 2020, the Shanghai-based plant was ready for mass production. The facility’s output has steadily improved, from 2,000 per week to 3,000 per week in just a matter of months.
This was despite the outbreak of COVID-19 in China. Gigafactory Shanghai’s operations were already affected by the 2020 Spring Festival, but the coronavirus outbreak ultimately resulted in Tesla’s China factory being closed until February 10. Only then was the electric car maker able to gradually resume its Model 3 ramp again. This, if any, makes the fact that Tesla China is poised to hit 4,000 Model 3 per week by the end of June extremely impressive.
It appears that Tesla will be over-delivering on its targets for Gigafactory Shanghai. The Model 3 factory in the Gigafactory Shanghai complex has been expected to hit a production run-rate of 150,000 vehicles per year in 2020, which translates to about 3,000 units per week. If Tesla can optimize its China plant’s operations further, there is a good chance that the company can hit a run rate that’s far beyond 150,000 per year by the end of December.