(Yicai Global) April 21 -- Production at Tesla’s Shanghai Gigafactory in the three months ended June 30 is expected to match that of the first quarter despite a three-week stoppage due to an outbreak of Covid-19 in the city, said Elon Musk, chief executive officer of the US electric car startup.

The interim shutdown in Shanghai did make Tesla lose out on production, but manufacturing has now been restored, Musk said at the first-quarter earnings conference call today. Output at the Shanghai plant is estimated at around 10,000 autos a week.

There will be record-breaking levels of production soon, Musk said. Second-quarter output should be the same as the first quarter and there will be much higher manufacturing levels in the second half of the year, he said.

Tesla’s deliveries will jump 60 percent this year from the year before to 1.5 million units, Musk said. The firm's Gigafactory Berlin-Brandenburg and Gigafactory Texas have just come on line in the last two months.

However, Dan Levy, an analyst at US financial services firm Credit Suisse, said in a report that it is unclear what Tesla’s shipments are likely to be this year, due to the interruption in the Shanghai Gigafactory’s operations as well as uncertainties as to how fast the facilities in Berlin and Texas can increase capacity.

Shanghai will remain the main source of Tesla’s exports to the European market for quite some time in future, despite the recent opening of the Berlin Gigafactory, a market insider said. This is because it will still take some time for capacity to be increased in Berlin and the Russia-Ukraine conflict has resulted in a shortage of auto parts in Europe. Supply chains are thus unable to meet large production demands.

Certainly the year has begun well. In the first three months, Palo Alto-based Tesla posted a seven-and-a-half-fold leap in profit from the same period last year to USD3.3 billion while revenue jumped 81 percent year on year to USD18.8 billion, according to the earnings report released today.

Vehicles are Tesla’s main source of revenue. Revenue from its car business jumped 87 percent in the three months ended March 31 from a year ago to USD16.9 billion. It also earned USD679 million, USD616 million and USD1.3 billion, from sales of carbon emissions credits, energy generation and storage as well as other businesses.

Editor: Kim Taylor