Following last week’s unveiling of the Model 3, Tesla is riding pretty high right now. And with good reason: The company managed to convince more than 325,000 buyers to put down $1,000 for a car that they likely won’t receive until 2018 at the earliest. Of course, the big question mark hovering over the company now is whether or not they can actually handle that level of production. While it’s undoubtedly encouraging that hundreds of thousands of consumers are eager to purchase the Model 3, its possible that interest may wane if some deliveries are pushed back until 2020.
Another issue surrounding the Model 3 is that its feature-set isn’t entirely clear at this point. Yeah, we know it’s a sleek car with fast acceleration, but many other important features remain a bit murky to say the least. For instance, when Musk first introduced the Model 3, he insinuated that Supercharging would be free. However, a closer inspection of Musk’s remarks revealed that Supercharging capabilities on the Model 3 would come standard, perhaps implying that Model 3 users might have to pay for Supercharging access.
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In fact, Tesla even changed the supercharging verbiage on its website following the Model 3’s unveiling. Whereas “Supecharging” was initially listed as one of the Model 3’s features, it has since been changed to “Supercharging Capable.”
What’s more, Electrek points out that Tesla has seemingly walked back a number of its initial claims about the Model 3.
For instance, Tesla’s initial Model 3 webpage boasted that the car would sport a “5-star Safety Rating in all categories.” Sounds great, but the updated Model 3 webpage simply states that the car will be “Designed for Safety.”
In another example, the first incarnation of the Model 3 webpage said that the car will feature “Autopilot Safety Features.” Now it simply reads that the Model 3 will come with “Autopilot Hardware”, seemingly implying that users will have to pay extra to get Autopilot safety features turned on.
As to why Tesla made these slight adjustments, it’s entirely likely that the company simply wants to avoid making any promises it can’t keep, especially given that production is still many many months away.
