They weren't making very many of them before the supply disruptions. They made and sold a total of just 367,500 cars globally in 2019. Toyota does that every two months in just North America. Today, Tesla announced a miss versus forecasted sales/deliveries last quarter, and lowered their forecast going forward.

The point is, Tesla choosing not to pursue the mass market is no reflection on how viable that market is. At Tesla volume, they are better off devoting their production capacity to the upmarket. The upmarket has better margins, so you sell there until you saturate demand.

I mean, that's true. But there's nothing to excuse here.

This is true, but not because demand for Model 3 and Model Y are much stronger than expected. It's because scaling production is taking longer than expected.