Elon Musk said Tesla was making cars so fast near the end of 2020 that it was messing up the paint jobs. The quality of Tesla’s cars suffers any time the company dramatically scales up production.

Tesla has gotten a lot of criticism for the quality of its cars. In an interview with industry analyst Sandy Munro, Musk was unusually candid about quality control problems.

Musk said that Tesla had improved its paint quality’toward the end of last year, even in the course of December’.

Tesla spent much of 2020 trying to hit an ambitious target set by Musk of selling 500,000 vehicles. That push apparently led to more quality problems with the paint.

‘if we knew them in advance, we would fix them,’ says Musk.’it’s like, if you go faster… you just discover these things,’ he adds.

Munro is well known for tearing down cars of all types. His critiques of Tesla’s vehicles are especially popular. He compared the quality to a Kia from the 1990s.

‘I thought your criticisms were accurate,’ Musk said Tuesday.’I think your criticisms are accurate’: Musk said.