Tesla yesterday announced that its highly anticipated Model 3 will be unveiled for the first time on March 31. In a letter to shareholders, Tesla CEO Elon Musk also noted that everything is running on schedule and that the vehicle is currently on track for production and deliveries to begin in “late 2017,” which in Tesla parlance may very well end up being December 31, 2017.
Nonetheless, it’s reassuring to see Tesla, which is no stranger to product delays, optimistically state that its mass market EV will in fact be available by the end of next year. On a related note, Tesla added that they’ll begin installing the necessary equipment to manufacture the Model 3 at scale sometime this year.
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All that said, the extent of what we’ll see of the Model 3 next month is still anyone’s guess. Being somewhat coy as always, Musk explained that he’s still contemplating how much of the Model 3 to showcase to the public. While this statement is open to interpretation, it’s likely that we’ll at the very least see what the Model 3 looks like but may have to wait a bit longer to see the full range of bells and whistles Tesla plans to add to the vehicle.
Nonetheless, it appears that it’s full steam ahead for Tesla’s mass-market EV, with the company reaffirming that it will have a base price of $35,000 before incentives. Once incentives are taken into account, some estimates have the cost of the Model 3 dropping down to as low as $25,000.
During Tesla’s earnings conference call yesterday, Musk also said that early sales of the Model S will be “relatively highly optioned versions of the car”, which is to say there won’t be many base models rolling off the production line at first.
We’ll undoubtedly hear more information about what will undoubtedly be Tesla’s biggest media event in years in the coming weeks. One thing we can pretty much guarantee with absolute certainty, however, is that Stewart Alsop probably won’t be on the guest list.
