Tesla's statement to customers and shareholders reveals the company plans to build 500,000 units per year until 2018 (as opposed to previously set 2020 time frame). The change of plans obviously derives from the fact that Tesla's upcoming Model 3 turned out to be in a much greater demand than expected. Tesla received 232,000 Model 3 orders in just 24 hours and a total of 325,000 during the first week. Now, the number of reservations rose to over 400,000. According to the company, this implies about $14 billion in future sales, making the Model 3 introduction the biggest consumer product launch ever.

Tesla's objective with Model 3 is to create "the world's best car" (and Tesla's most affordable to date) with a base price of $35,000, before any incentives, with a range of at least 215 miles on a single charge.

To support the rapidly growing fleet of Tesla vehicles, Tesla continues to expand their network of sales, service, and Superchargers worldwide. They energized 29 Supercharger locations and 311 Destination charging locations during Q1, bringing our total away-from-home charging locations to almost 615 and 2,200, respectively. Global Supercharger and Destination connectors now total over 3,600 and 3,700, respectively.

With Tesla's plans to advance their 500,000 total unit build plan, they had to re-evaluate their level of capital expenditures, but expect it will be about 50% higher than their previous guidance of $1.5 billion for 2016. Tesla believes that investing to meet that demand is the best long-term decision for the company.