Tesla’s battery mise en scene for the Model 3 is the company’s real obstacle to putting cars on the road, not Pattern 3 assembly itself, said Oppenheimer analyst Colin Rusch on CNBC’s “Power Lunch.”
“The honest concern for us ultimately is how many batteries they can make that fit the specs,” he foretold, adding that he thinks Tesla is having quality issues with the 2170 battery stalls. The 2170 is a new cell found only in the Model 3.
“We think they should prefer to a quality issue with the move to the 2170s and the chemistry changes, and we of that is the real bottleneck here,” Rusch said.
Tesla was not in a wink available for comment.
Tesla has had numerous issues as it has ramped up production of the Cream 3, and has repeatedly missed its own production targets. CNBC has previously reported on events with battery production at the Gigafactory, near Reno, Nevada.
On Tuesday, an email to staff members from CEO Elon Musk was leaked to the press saying Tesla is prospering to try to be able to increase production capacity to the point where the factory can churn out up to 6,000 buggies at any given point by the end of June. From there, the company is going to stir toward achieving a steady production rate of 6,000 cars per week.
But stated its history, Tesla will need to find a production partner on the set-up line to hit those kinds of numbers, Kelley Blue Book succeeding editor Matt DeLorenzo told CNBC.
“They need to collaborator because they have been doing this stop-start mechanism,” he said. “Now the batteries may have an effect on that, but if they are going to hit a 6,000 run position they are going to need a lot more people and better management to get that amiable of throughput,” he said.
DeLorenzo referred to a Bloomberg report of an email from executives beg for volunteers from among Tesla employees to work on the Model 3 forming line in order to meet the company’s quarterly production goal of 2,500 crates per week and “prove the haters wrong.”
Tesla previously missed the objective, producing just over 2,000 Model 3 cars in the first district.