It’s hard to imagine a Model 3 being born every 100.8 seconds. But, that will be the case if the company hits an aggressive new goal that CEO Elon Musk reportedly delivered in an email to workers.
Among the plans outlined in the letter titled “Progress, Precision and Profit,” Musk says the company will move to a 24/7 operation at its factories in order to ramp up production of the Model 3 to 6,000 units per week by June.
“The reason that the burst-build target rate is 6000 and not 5000 per week in June is that we cannot have a number with no margin for error across thousands of internally and externally produced parts and processes, amplified by a complex global logistics chain,” Musk writes, according to a copy of the note obtained by Jalopnik. “Actual production will move as fast as the least lucky and least well-executed part of the entire Tesla production/supply chain system.”
Musk said there is planned downtime over the next few months to optimize the assembly line to speed production. He also said he expects the Model 3’s build precision to be better than any other car in the world by a factor of ten.
“Our car needs to be designed and built with such accuracy and precision that, if an owner measures dimensions, panel gaps and flushness, and their measurements don’t match the Model 3 specs, it just means that their measuring tape is wrong,” Musk writes.
Musk also discussed a plan to rein in spending in a new focus on profitability. Expenditures exceeding $1 million are now on hold or must be approved by Musk himself.
The letter is published in its entirety here.