Tesla Model 3 production delayed as losses hit record high

Tesla has hit a bumpy patch as it races to prepare its game-changing Model 3 for full-scale production. This is the mainstream Tesla designed to send sales stratospheric, as it wades into the £35,000 EV market.

However, the Californian electric car specialist has made just 260 of the models in the third quarter, it admitted during its interim results announcement.

Tesla had hoped to be building 5000 Model 3 cars a week by the fourth quarter of 2017 - but it has now pushed back that target to the end of the first quarter of 2018, citing production difficulties.

Tesla losses hit $671 million in Q3 2017

This time last year, Tesla made a modest profit of $22m but the costs associated with readying the Model 3 for full-scale launch have pushed the company into the red. It lost $671m in the third quarter of 2017.

'There are thousands of processes to build the Model 3,' Tesla CEO Elon Musk told analysts during a call from the Gigafactory battery facility, which has become a bottleneck for production. 'We can only move as fast as the least competent elements of that mixture.'

Shares in Tesla fell 5% after the earnings announcement. It cut 700 workers in October 2017, as part of an operational review to streamline costs.

The company is planning to build a new factory in China to help accelerate production, but this plan won't be realised for at least three years, according to Musk.