EDITORIAL: Tesla promises more, but has yet to deliver on the Model 3

Business leaders rarely generate fawning media coverage, but Elon Musk has proven a persistent exception. The Tesla founder’s grand pronouncements tend to wow even many professional doubters.

On Tuesday, Mr. Musk was at it again, tweeting sketchy details about the possibility of soon offering a pickup truck to compete with General Motors and Ford on their most profitable turf. Mr. Musk hinted such a product would hit the market after Tesla begins producing a sports-utility vehicle slated to be on sale by 2019, the Wall Street Journal reported.

It’s difficult to keep track of Mr. Musk’s bluster, but back in August 2016, he vowed that the Model Y SUV would be his priority after getting the mass-produced Model 3 to the market. “I promise that we will make a pickup right after the Model Y,” he tweeted. “Have had the core design/engineering elements in my head for almost 5 years. Am dying to build it.”

Problem is, Mr. Musk has repeatedly fallen short of realizing his cheery projections.

“The vague statement to his 17.1 million Twitter followers was a classic Musk move: stoking enthusiasm for future products ... even as he struggles to bring his latest vehicle to market,” the Journal noted.

Indeed, it was only months ago that Tesla insisted it would churn out 5,000 Model 3s a week by the end of this year. But when production began in July, the company faced immediate challenges, according to various observers. By October, “the advanced assembly line Tesla had boasted of building still wasn’t fully ready,” the Journal reported. Citing inside sources, the paper revealed that “factory workers had been piecing together parts of the cars in a special area while the company feverishly worked to finish the machinery designed to produce Model 3s at a rate of thousands a week.”

Tesla officials dismissed such accounts, but the company pushed back production goals to late March 2018. Even that goal is unlikely to be reached, but now Mr. Musk is already brashly touting plans for the manufacture of SUVs and pickups.

“Seems like Tesla is biting off a lot and should focus to master the Model 3 first,” one auto analyst told the Journal.

At the same time, the company continues to lose money and hemorrhage cash. Tesla went through $1.1 billion in the third quarter and risks major problems if it continues to struggle with the production of the Model 3. Tesla took more than “400,000 pre-orders for the vehicle,” BusinessWeek reports, “and it absolutely has to build all those cars to make its current business work.”

Tesla’s stock hit an all-time high of $389.61 in September but has since dropped almost 20 percent and hovered around $312 on Wednesday. The company did get a break when the GOP tax bill preserved the federal handout for buyers of electric vehicles. In the long run, however, it will take more than Mr. Musk’s optimistic vision and media savvy to sustain Tesla.