Tesla finally manages to produce 5,000 Model 3 cars in a week

Tesla is finally catching up to CEO Elon Musk's promises.

The electric car maker manufactured 5,000 Model 3 cars in the last week of June, Reuters reported Sunday.

The accounts vary slightly: Elon Musk reportedly sent an internal email saying that Tesla hit the target of producing 5,000 Model 3 cars in a week. Two factory workers, however, told Reuters that the last 5,000th car was a couple hours late.

Whichever it is, Tesla appears to have finally ironed out the kinks in Model 3 production, allowing for a faster ramp-up. According to Musk's email, Tesla expects to produce 6,000 Model 3 cars per week next month.

It's been a long road to here. Model 3 production started in July 2017, and back then, Musk was promising 20,000 Model 3 cars per month by the end of the year. But a number of production roadblocks — including battery shortages and heavy reliance on robots, which was supposed to be one of Tesla's strengths — slowed down the production ramp-up rate.

On Sunday, Musk also shared another company milestone on Twitter: Tesla has produced a total of 7,000 cars in a week (that's including the Model S and Model X units).

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With the company burning money at an alarming rate, things were starting to look grim. But it appears that Tesla's recent moves, which included building a new Model 3 assembly line under a giant tent, had paid off.

In Oct. 2017, Musk said the plan was to reach a production rate of 10,000 vehicles per week towards the end of 2018. Even with all the setbacks the company has suffered, right now this doesn't sound all that impossible.