Robots assemble a Model 3 electric car at Tesla’s factory in Fremont, Calif. (Tesla via Vimeo)
Tesla share prices declined 5 percent in after-hours trading today, due to a grimmer-than-expected quarterly report that highlighted snags in the production ramp-up for the company’s make-or-break Model 3 electric car.
The company reported its biggest-ever net quarterly loss, $619.4 mllion or $3.70 per share. It also said it expects to hit a target of making 5,000 Model 3 cars by next March, rather than by December as promised earlier. Only 260 Model 3’s were built during the third quarter of this year.
Tesla said the biggest source of the delay is the assembly line for the Model 3’s battery module at the company’s Gigafactory 1 in Nevada. “The combined complexity of module design and its automated manufacturing process has taken this line longer to ramp than expected,” the company said in the third-quarter report.
