Tesla aims to build 500000 all-electric cars by 2018

The company's shares rose as much as 8 per cent in after-hours trading before retreating slightly.

Even as the company soared past expectations for preorders of its Model 3 sedan this year, the first quarter saw the automaker report a $282 million loss on revenue of $1.15 billion.

Revenue for the quarter came in at $1.60 billion, in-line with the consensus estimate and up 45% year-over-year (YoY).

Not to mention, Reichow has been with Tesla for more than five years leading the production team for the past three years.

By comparison, General Motors' $48 billion market value is equivalent to about $4,800 for every vehicle it sold past year.

Tesla CTO JB Straubel said the Model 3 was created to facilitate the manufacturing, but we are still talking about 6,000 to 7,000 unique components in the auto.

Tesla had courted concerns after setting 2020 as the date to start producing 500,000 cars annually but has pulled the date forward to 2018. The company has a goal of 80,000-90,000 deliveries, and 400,000 pre-orders for the Model 3. Unfortunately, achieving this goal may be easier said than done, particularly with the recently announced departures of Greg Reichow, Tesla's VP of production, and Josh Ensign, VP of manufacturing.

Likening the production date to a term paper deadline, Musk said it was important to set the date, but the company was highly unlikely to develop the supply chain for Model 3 parts in time.

Tesla's Model 3 sedan, its first mass-market product, has generated massive interest since it was unveiled on March 31. The company acknowledged the shipment of the Model X was insufficient to meet demand. Analysts polled by FactSet expected a loss of 87 cents per share. That timeline is now moved up to 2018 and Elon Musk went further during the call to say one million vehicles in 2020 is his best guess. "Tesla is going to be hell-bent on becoming the best manufacturer on Earth", he said, imploring "the best manufacturing people in the world" to "join our company". The company began accepting $1,000 deposits for the vehicle last month, and received more than 325,000 orders in the first week.

Excluding items, the company lost 57 cents a share.

Source: Tesla aims to build 500000 all-electric cars by 2018