Tesla electric car production reaches multiple milestones

October is shaping up to be a good for month for Tesla. They took the pressure of their quarterly reporting into their own hands and weathered Wall Street hitting back at them for wanting to go private, so that now all focus is back on production and with great effect.

Let us first look at the Tesla Model 3 as Bloomberg’s tracker counts 100,000 units made by now. It is an impressive figure, particularly when considering that earlier this year Elon Musk had considered Tesla to be deep in production hell.

While this had soon turned into delivery hell that prompted Tesla to call on their fans to volunteer, the increased production rate has had another effect as well – Tesla has reached the cap of the U.S. EV incentive, which runs out once a company sells more than 200,000 electric cars cumulatively in the States. All orders placed from today do not qualify for the full support any longer as the $7,500 credit will drop by half for Tesla on January, 1 and we had reported that much in July. By the end of 2019 Tesla cars will not be eligible for any funding if the incentives remains as it is.

Another word of warning on the tax credit – subscribers to our daily electrive newsletter had been informed before – a new bill has been introduced last week by the Republican Senator John Barrasso, whose biggest donors are oil and gas companies. He is aiming to end the $7,500 federal tax credit for electric cars and instead tax them more. The bill has been referred to the Committee on Finance for review.

The good news is though that production is up to speed in Fremont. Tesla has built more than 11,500 electric vehicles this month alone, 7,000 of those being Model 3 and according to Electrek, 5,300 have been made last week alone, meaning the electric car maker is well on target.

bloomberg.com (Model 3 tracker), electrek.co (October production), cnbc.com (the end of eligibility), electrek.co (bill to axe EV incentive)