Elon Musk cheered on progress making a key component of the Model 3 sedan and urged Tesla Inc. employees to pay no attention to distractions in a series of emails sent in the wake of the U.S. suing him for securities fraud.

Musk, Tesla’s chairman and chief executive officer, wrote in one of the emails that the company’s Model 3 drive unit team had built more than 10,000 units in a week.

That’s potentially crucial progress for a company that has been vague about when it’ll be capable of building that many complete Model 3s, the first electric vehicle it’s tried to mass-manufacture.

“You’re doing an incredible job,” Musk, 47, wrote in the subject line of a separate email sent to employees Friday. “Ignore all distractions. One more hardcore weekend and we will be victorious.”

Tesla representatives didn’t immediately comment on the emails, copies of which were obtained by Bloomberg News.

Musk has called the Securities and Exchange Commission’s lawsuit unjustified, and the company’s board released a statement saying it was “fully confident” in his integrity and leadership.

Meanwhile, Musk apologized anew for slow deliveries of Tesla electric vehicles as the company races to hand off as many cars to customers as it can before reporting crucial quarterly results.

“Sorry for difficulties delivering your Tesla due to high volume!” the Tesla chief executive officer wrote on Twitter late Friday. It was his first tweet since the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sued him a day earlier, alleged he had committed fraud and sought to bar him from serving as the director or officer of a public company.

Musk, 47, first started acknowledging delivery delays almost two weeks ago. In a Sept. 16 post, he declared that Tesla had “gone from production hell to delivery logistics hell,” but said that these problems would be “far more tractable” than the ones that had been handicapping the company’s car output.

Tesla has tapped an army of brand-loving volunteers in a frantic push to boost sales and deliveries before the end of the third quarter. To seal sales, the company has also offered $100 credits toward charging -- or in some cases free charging -- at its network of stations. One shopper even shared a receipt showing he was dangled a $3,000 discount on a Model S sedan that had been in inventory at a Tesla store.