Tesla delivered 83,500 vehicles to customers in the third quarter—doubling the number of Model 3 sedans it was able to put in customers’ hands than in all previous quarters combined.
That figure, which is 4% higher than some reports suggested yesterday, also represents an 80% improvement over the entirety of deliveries in 2017, a hopeful sign for customers whose Model 3 is back ordered.
Tesla had predicted it would deliver between 50,000 and 55,000 Model 3s in the quarter. It fell right in the middle of that range at 53,239.
The numbers update comes just days after Elon Musk told employees the automaker was “very close to achieving profitability and proving the naysayers wrong.”
(That email was sent after Musk agreed to relinquish the role of chairman for at least three years and pay $20 million to settle fraud charges that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought against him for a Tweet earlier this year regarding a possible privatization of the company.)
That same note urged workers to push their productivity to the limits as the third quarter ended, and they seem to have done that. Tesla says in the last week of the quarter, it produced over 5,300 Model 3 vehicles.
The company says it expects to continue to scale production and delivery in the fourth quarter, as it expands direct delivery to customers at their home or office. Nearly 12,000 Model S and X vehicles were in transit to customers at the end of the quarter. Tesla says it still expects to deliver 100,000 of those vehicles before the end of the fiscal year.
