Tesla Model 3 starts the journey to disrupt global EV market

Outside Tesla’s Fremont, California factory, Musk showed off the US$35,000 base vehicle with a range of 350km on a charge that marks a departure from the company’s earlier luxury electric cars.

Outside Tesla’s Fremont, California factory, Musk showed off the $35,000 base vehicle, whose battery is created to keep it going for 350 kilometers, on a charge that marks a departure from the company’s earlier luxury electric cars.

The over half a million reservations are up from about 373,000 disclosed in April 2016.

“This is the day we’ve been working towards since the beginning of the company”, said Musk. “It’s an unbelievable auto, but we’re going through six months of manufacturing hell”, he noted.

“Everything was focused on how we could move this through the assembly line faster and more efficient with great quality”, said Doug Field who leads the Tesla vehicle programs.

A customer pre-ordering a Model 3 today would have to wait until late 2018 to receive the vehicle, CNN reported. As of tonight, it appears that at least 50 Model 3 production cars have been produced.

The Model 3, he said, was designed from the outset with mass production in mind to push down cost and crank cars out quickly. The vehicle has a range of 220 to 310 miles and has been created to “have the highest safety ratings in every category, ” the company said.

First unveiled in March previous year and detailed only in vague terms, the Model 3 has been the subject of intense speculation up until now.

Tesla said the Model 3 was created to achieve a five-star safety rating. Initially, all Model 3 production will be rear-wheel drive only and have the larger, longer-range battery installed. Musk, however, could announce a more powerful trim with a better range.

Rather, Musk sees Tesla as a pioneer to pave the way for other carmakers, while also putting pressure on old school automakers to embrace electric cars.

If the time frame isn’t a bother, you can order a Model 3 by navigating to Tesla’s website and placing a ,000 deposit.

“There’s nothing in the Model 3 that doesn’t need to be there”, Musk said, thinking back to the production difficulties Tesla had with the extremely complicated Model X.

Like its predecessors, the Model 3 is fully electric and on-board computers can handle driving tasks. For another $3,000, the Model 3 will be ready for “full self-driving capability”, an option that will become available in the future and makes the vehicle “capable of conducting trips with no action required by the person in the driver’s seat”, the company said. “You will be able to watch movies, talk to friends, go to sleep”. But there’s one aspect of the electric vehicle that might take a little more adjustment: there is no key for the Model 3.

Musk runs solar energy firm SolarCity, and is building rechargeable batteries to power homes as well as cars.

The interior is extremely simple, with a single 15-inch touchscreen sitting proud of the dash that includes virtually all of the car’s operating controls aside from the pedals and a couple of buttons on the steering wheel. Tesla is only going to produce 100 Model 3 cars in August, which will be followed by approximately 1,500 in September. With the Model 3, Elon Musk hopes to produce 250,000 cars a year, later expanding production to 500,000 cars a year.

“This is one of Tesla’s challenges – they’ve always launched in a white space before”, said Michelle Krebs, executive analyst with Autotrader.