Tesla hits Model 3 goal and is 'real car company', says Elon Musk

Tesla reached a milestone critical to Elon Musk’s goal to bring electric cars to the masses — and earn some profit in the process — by finally exceeding a long—sought production target with the Model 3.
 

By building more than 5,000 of the sedans in the last week of the second quarter, Tesla “just became a real car company,” the chief executive officer said in an internal email on Sunday obtained by Bloomberg News.
 

He may turn out to be right, if Tesla can hit these manufacturing goals again and again. After all, producing 5,000 units of one vehicle in a week is far from unheard of in the auto industry, and the company had to pull out all the stops to get to this point, including constructing a tent and makeshift assembly line next to its factory. What Musk still needs to prove is that this level of output can endure.