Tesla cries ‘HELP!’ as it tries to find a way to build 1 million cars a year

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Elon Musk is calling out to motor industry production engineers as Tesla try to find a way to build 1,000,000 cars a year by 2020.

The new Tesla Model 3 – Tesla’s affordable electric car – got its first public outing just over a month ago, and within a few days had garnered 250k orders complete with a $1,000 deposits (and orders now seem to be north of 400k).

But, as we asked when we reported Tesla’s huge early order numbers, how on earth are Tesla going to cope with that sort of demand?

Tesla’s stumbling block has always seemed to be actually producing cars, and Elon Musk’s bullish schedules for new Tesla models and deliveries have always stumbled as Tesla struggles to actually churn cars out. But the production problems Tesla has had pale in to insignificance compared to the challenge now confronting them.

The reality is that Tesla needs to go from struggling to churn out 50k cars a year last year, to 10 times that within two years and 20 times that within four. Yes, Tesla wants to be building a million cars a year by 2020.

The trouble is, there probably aren’t enough experienced production engineers who can be coaxed in to tackling what seems such an insurmountable problem, with the US hampered by a lack of qualified production engineers, just like the UK, and a finite supply of production experts with the depth of experience needed worldwide too.

There’s no point hiring 20-something production guys with lots of fire but no real experience; what’s needed is 40 and 50-somethings with a lifetime of experience who can bring with them a whole team that might have a fighting chance of getting Tesla somewhere towards their target. But such a team – or certainly a team prepared to stake everything with Tesla – probably doesn’t exist.

But that hasn’t stopped Elon Musk claiming there will be new manufacturing expertise coming on-board at Tesla in the coming weeks – just as Tesla’s Production VP leaves – and Musk has called for “…the best manufacturing people in the world to join the company” to solve their problems. He went on to say:

Tesla is hell-bent on being the world’s best manufacturer. We are trying to get as many EVs on the road as possible. What’s the limiting factor? It’s production of the car.  We’ve got to figure out: How do we get super-good at making large, complex objects.

As problems go, working out how to produce your product in sufficient numbers is a better one than wondering how the hell you’re going to sell what you are producing. But it’s still a huge problem.

If Tesla’s market valuation wasn’t so insane, you could see a deep-pocketed predator in the car industry taking the opportunity to make a bid for the company and make Tesla’s production work, but with its massive market worth that’s not going to happen..

So, on the face of it, there is no solution – Tesla simply won’t be able to reach the production levels it needs to build the orders it’s getting, certainly not in the time frame it wants to.

That on-going problem hasn’t really hampered Tesla too much with the low volume Model S and Model X, but buyers of the Model 3 won’t be prepared to forgive Musk’s problems and will simply take their business elsewhere.

It’s a big success for Tesla, but one that’s left them between a rock and a hard place with no realistic solution.