Tesla CEO Elon Musk has finally reached his goal, and perhaps not a moment too soon. The company confirmed Monday afternoon that engineering chief Doug Field has officially left the electric automaker, about two months after saying he'd taken an indefinite leave of absence. Field's departure came a day after Musk celebrated Tesla's producing its 5,000th Model 3 vehicle in the last week of June, a milestone considered crucial for getting Tesla to turn a profit, and one that prompted the executive to say in a letter to employees, "I think we just became a real car company." Tesla, though, fell just a few hours short of hitting the stated target before the end of the second quarter, which officially closed on Saturday, and it's unclear whether the pace of manufacturing can be sustained. "There was one guy, in the shareholder meeting, Elon Musk was like, 'He worked for 60 days straight!', and he was praising him," said Yasmin Tayag, science reporter at Inverse. "That's crazy! I wouldn't want any of my employees to do that!" Still, the achievement marks what could be a turning point for Tesla. Some analysts believe getting the vehicle ー which saw 180,000 preorders in the first 24 hours they were offered ー out to customers could make the still-unprofitable company cash flow positive. But production of the mass-market Model 3 has been dogged by issues from faulty batteries to problems with automation. Musk originally set a goal of hitting 5,000 cars a week by the end of last year's third quarter, then pushed it back to the end of 2017 before again delaying it to Q2. Over the last few weeks, Musk has taken some unusual steps to ramp up production, shifting workers from other parts of the company to the Model 3 and building an extra assembly line outside the company's Fremont, Calif., factory. "There had been so much dependence on automation, and finally in April when they still weren't hitting their internal goals, Elon Musk was like, 'Okay, we relied too much on robots, humans are underrated,'" Tayag said. "I hope for his sake, now that there's less pressure to meet a specific deadline, they can slow down a little bit, assess where things are working, maybe get the robots back in there but tweak them so they're actually doing their jobs right." Including the Model S and Model X, [Musk said](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1013519243030253570) Musk says Tesla manufactured 7,000 cars in total in the last week of June. The company is expected to release full production numbers for the second quarter later this week. Field, who'd been with the company for five years, was previously vice president of hardware engineering at Apple. He was a central part of developing new vehicles for Tesla, including the Model 3. For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/tesla-hits-model-3-production-target).
