Tesla: Model 3 production to start on schedule in July

Tesla says in a letter to its shareholders that production of the Model 3 is on schedule. The first cars will go into production in July and mass production will start in September. The first prototypes were made at the beginning of February.

Tesla writes that the first crash tests with the Model 3 prototypes have yielded positive results. The development of the car, the supply of parts and the start of production are going according to plan, the car manufacturer assures. Tesla is setting up the production line for the Model 3 in its factories. In January, Gigafactory 1 started making the batteries.

Somewhere in the fourth quarter of this year, mass production of the Model 3 should start and 5,000 units a week should roll out of the factory. In 2018, at an unspecified moment, that should be ten thousand cars a week. Tesla plans to deliver a total of half a million cars by 2018, and by 2020 there should be a million.

According to VentureBeat, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said in a conference call that it is not necessary to find more lenders to get the Model 3 into production, but that it is getting close. Tesla plans to spend between $2 billion and $2.5 billion and has $3.4 billion in cash. Musk says raising more investment capital is likely a logical step to avoid risk.

In the last three months of last year, Tesla produced 24,882 cars, 77 percent more than in the same period a year earlier. 22,252 Teslas were delivered in the quarter. The number of orders has increased by 49 percent, according to Tesla. Tesla does not want to say how many copies of the Model 3 have been pre-ordered. The last time the company made any statements about this was in May last year, when 373,000 orders had been placed.

Tesla has also announced that it will expand its Supercharger network. In North America, the number of fast charging locations will double in 2017. It is not yet clear how many Superchargers will be added in other countries.