Tesla Inc. is building 3,000 Model Y crossovers a week at its new Austin, Texas, factory — a sign the electric-car maker is making up for lost time at the money-losing plant.
Tesla shared the new production figure in a tweet Thursday. The milestone comes a week after Bloomberg reported that Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk had asked the head of the company’s China division to get the Austin factory up to speed.
Extrapolated out over a year, that production rate would get Tesla to about 156,000 vehicles, still short of the annual target of 250,000 the company promoted in its third-quarter letter to shareholders.
But it’s a long way from the slow start Tesla experienced in Austin, due in part to the company pivoting at the last minute to using older battery cells after it found a new design wasn’t ready for volume production.
