Over the weekend, Tesla announced that it had got 276,000 reservations for its upcoming Tesla Model 3. Tesla head Elon Musk also said he hopes that the company can produce 500,000 Model 3 vehicles per year when production is at full capacity. New figures put a dampener on this goal, Tesla reported it has shipped fewer cars than it forecasted for the first quarter.
At the moment, Tesla sells and delivers two different cars, the Model S and the Model X. The company had predicted it would deliver 16,000 vehicles in Q1 2016, but instead only managed to deliver 14,820, just 1,180 off its target.
Tesla said the reason it had missed the delivery target was due to parts shortages. The statement issued regarding the delivery target reads: "The root causes of the parts shortages were: Tesla"s hubris in adding far too much new technology to the Model X in version 1, insufficient supplier capability validation, and not having broad enough internal capability to manufacture the parts in-house."
The supply shortages which stymied Tesla"s ability to meet its targets has been resolved and the weekly production rate jumped to 750 by the end of March. Tesla is investigating the causes of the parts shortages to stave off a repeat of the incident during Model 3 production.