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Tesla Model 3 prototype revealed - On-sale in late 2017 with a 215-mile minimum range and a base price of $35,000

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#1 · (Edited)
Will add press release and official photos when they're available on the website



via The Verge
After ten years of waiting, Tesla has revealed the Model 3, the vehicle that CEO Elon Musk hopes will take the electric car to the masses.

At the unveiling of the Model 3 this evening at the company's design studio in Hawthorne, California, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said the car will deliver at least 215 miles of range beginning at just $35,000 — that's a bold claim, and an important one for Tesla to meet. Musk is "fairly confident" that deliveries will begin by the end of 2017, and "you will not be able to buy a better car for $35,000, even with no options."

The base car will do 0-60MPH in less than 6 seconds, with versions that go "much faster." Range will be at least 215 miles, but Tesla hopes to exceed those numbers in the final car. All Model 3 cars will include support for Tesla's high-speed Supercharging network. "It's about going where you want to go," says Musk. By the end of 2017, when the Model 3 launches, Tesla says it will have a total of 7,200 Superchargers, double the number available today.

Autopilot hardware is standard, and all safety features will be active automatically. Five adults will fit comfortably — "comfortably is the important part here," says Musk.

The front to rear roof area — from the windshield all the way to the trunk — will be one continuous piece of glass. And, just like the Model S, it will have front and rear trunks for storage. "More cargo capacity than any gasoline car of the same external dimensions," says Musk. You can even fit a 7-foot long surfboard on the inside.

The two current Tesla vehicles, the Model S and Model X, are both extremely expensive. Even with tax incentives, both cars easily push $100,000. In order for Tesla to sell ten times as many cars as it does now, it needs a much cheaper automobile. That's the Model 3. It's the future of the company.

But don't expect to get your hands on one any time soon. The Model 3 isn't expected to begin production until late 2017, more than 18 months from now. Tesla will happily take your preorder for a modest $1,000 down payment. Tesla plans to more than double the size of its dealership and service network by the end of next year, to sell and take care of all these new cars.

For comparison, the biggest direct competitor for the Model 3 is the Chevy Bolt. GM says that car will have an electric range greater than 200 miles and a price, after tax incentives, of around $30,000.

But today is all about the Model 3, the pinnacle of the Tesla Motors master plan. Elon Musk laid it all out in a blog post ten years ago:

Build sports car - The Tesla Roadster
Use that money to build an affordable car - The Model S
Use that money to build an even more affordable car - The Model 3

At the announcement of the Model 3 this evening, Elon Musk even thanked Model S and Model X purchasers for funding the development of the car. The Model 3 is the culmination of a decade's worth of work. Elon Musk is betting billions on it, and it needs to deliver. The future of Tesla Motors, quite literally, rides on its success.





 
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#630 ·
An opinion piece this morning from The Atlantic, you're #1 source for automotive industry analysis:

The Tesla Model 3 Is Still a Rich Person's Car

And that’s all it may ever be.

Tesla calls the Model 3, which the company revealed last week, “our most affordable car yet.” At a starting price of $35,000, they’re not wrong, but affordability is relative. In their eagerness to see Elon Musk’s electric car empire overthrow the old, traditional combustion engine, Tesla supporters might overlook how the Model 3 makes the auto market more uncomfortable for those who can’t already afford whatever they want anyway.

...

In fact, electric cars are exerting an under-discussed uncertainty on the car-buying market. The promise of cleaner, cheaper-operating electric vehicles—particularly at a price point that ordinary folk can afford—makes buying a traditional combustion or even a hybrid vehicle a riskier proposition than it was just a few years ago. Meanwhile, the conditions for electric vehicle adoption have become less favorable since the Model S was introduced. For one part, some states have significantly reduced the tax incentives that made more affordable electric vehicles like the Nissan Leaf appealing, pushing typical buyers back toward cheaper combustion vehicles. And for another part, falling oil prices dropped the cost of gas to under $2 at the start of this year. As with the hybrids that came before them, electric vehicles never offered an appealing financial proposition as compared to combustion engine automobiles.

...

Sure, would-be Model 3 speculators might be better off just investing their $1,000 in Tesla stock instead. But they might not! $1,000 invested in TSLA two years ago would only have net roughly $200 in profit if sold today. And besides, there is no truer expression of the merger of the automotive and tech industries than the automobile’s conversion into a financial instrument. The Model 3 might look like a car for the everyman, and someday it might become one. But for now it’s something else entirely: a kickstartery way to back Elon Musk, who may not be worth backing. Even if Musk manages to pull off a string of huge deliveries, his success would likely trigger investment from the major car companies, many of which have a massive capital advantage over Tesla. Maybe that’s why the company’s stock has barely moved for two years.
 
#631 ·
Remember how I've been saying the car I see most days parked at the superchargers is a Chevy Spark? Well I was going by there today and I happen to be in that parking lot so I went over to double check the model and lo and behold it's just an Aveo, it's not a plug-in it's not an EV.

So this is just someone trying to make a statement apparently, every workday. This is an off to the side section of a massive parking lot that is literally never full. It is not a case of EV slots taking away from scarce parking.

 
#636 ·
Are you sure? Because I've seen model S's charging at the Hooksett rest stop supercharger from the other side of the fence.

Anyway it doesn't really matter, these are never completely full, just seems kind of silly to me.
 
#637 ·
The Week that Electric Vehicles Went Mainstream

The Tesla Team April 7, 2016

A week ago, we started taking reservations for Model 3, and the excitement has been incredible. We’ve now received more than 325,000 reservations, which corresponds to about $14 billion in implied future sales, making this the single biggest one-week launch of any product ever. This interest has spread completely organically. Unlike other major product launches, we haven’t advertised or paid for any endorsements. Instead, this has been a true grassroots effort driven by the passion of the Tesla team that’s worked so hard to get to this point and our current and future customers who believe so strongly in what we are trying to achieve. Most importantly, we are all taking a huge step towards a better future by accelerating the transition to sustainable transportation.

We want to thank everyone who has shown their faith in Tesla and the mission of electric vehicles. We would write more, but we need to get back to increasing our Model 3 production plans!
Three-hundred and twenty five THOUSAND deposits.
 
#639 ·
Holy crap I bet there are going to be a lot of all nighters at Tesla. It's a great problem to have though - probably the best.

On their original ramp, I bet if you put a reservation in today you'd get your car in 4 years. They've got to figure out how to cut that time down substantially.
 
#647 ·
Honestly, I have no idea how Tesla plans to actually produce all of these cars. It's a great problem to have but trust me, there's a lot of people at Tesla right now crapping bricks.
 
#653 · (Edited)
And it's not just stamping sheet metal or casting brackets... and welding it all together. It's adding more modules to make drive units and power inverter modules. It's buying more injection molding machines since all polymer fascias are made in house IIRC. It's getting the purchased parts suppliers upgraded contracts and having them scale up. Wheels, seats, trim, chassis bits, shocks, springs, lights, glazing, mirrors, this bit, that bit. Then there's the equipment NUMMI left behind. How relatively new was it when Tesla got it? How much maintenance or refurbishment might be required? A new Paint Shop? Body Shop?

And mind you... doing all of this while all auto suppliers are currently running all out trying to support the healthy grow post recession.

Then there's the people resources required. Should be lots of job opportunities posting for any interested.

It's really hard, but not impossible. At least they have practice with S and soon X. Big mfrs do it frequently, but they have established processes and methods. And they run into issues.
 
#680 ·
This. Why does everyone forget there will be other versions?
 
#675 ·
Look, Elon said you could carry a surf board in the Model 3. So go out, buy your damn surf board and shut up about the small trunk opening! ;)

And pre-order more cars while you are at it.
 
#677 ·
You don't want a trunk opening this big, do you?



This is much better.



Afterall, TVs are flat these days. So is Ikea furniture.
 
#679 ·


Afterall, TVs are flat these days. So is Ikea furniture.
I'm quite certain MOST of the Tesla fans will get over this choice. They're happy with other aspects/WOWs and let's be honest... most people aren't carrying chairs and big boxes of stuff frequently. After all, most people drive sedans.

Of course such a decision by GM would have resulted in mass killings and riots. :laugh::facepalm:
 
#692 ·
While you guys bicker about something stupid like this trunk opening :rolleyes:, Elon is out doing this.
How big is the trunk opening in that? And I don't see any glass at all :thumbdown:
 
#704 ·
photoshopped as a hatchback.. now it looks even MORE like a Mazda3

Still not digging the front bumper but the rest of the car looks really good. Far more useful than the sedan. Really close to something that I would buy.
 
#709 · (Edited)
Nope. That would require a structural crossmember across the roof to provide strength and a mounting point for the hatch hinge, which would eat into the rear headroom. Now *I* don't care about rear headroom and prefer hatches to trunks, but I guess Tesla doesn't want the same whining about space that the Volt always gets, so they've picked that as their priority.

Edit: For the record, I'm disappointed that it's going to be a trunk, but I've wanted an all-glass canopy since I saw pictures of concept cars in the 70s, so I'll get over it :laugh: I'll go for the fixed glass front roof option.
 
#707 ·
Outside of it looking like a Mazda 3 with a head cold there was something tugging at me about the looks of this sucker, and it just now finally hit me!


 
#714 ·
There are 168,000 gas stations in the USA. Why would they add hundreds of thousands of new superchargers?

Incidentally, there are 9,758 electric charging stations at last count. Although that data is now about 2 years old so no doubt there are probably a lot more in 2016.
 
#729 ·
via Automotive News
Keep it simple, stupid.

That's the mindset Tesla has adopted for the strikingly sparse interior of its Model 3 sedan, the electric vehicle that racked up a mind-blowing 325,000 advance orders within a week of its unveiling.

Bringing the EV to market by the end of 2017, hitting its $35,000 target base price and doing all this at volumes the automaker never has achieved? It sounds, well, problematic.

But helping Tesla's cause is the remarkably straightforward interior design. There's no instrument panel in front of the driver. No tangible buttons or remote knobs, levers or touchpads controlling any screens built into the dashboard.

Instead, a single touch screen, 15 inches wide, protrudes from the center console. It controls nearly every ancillary function not related to driving the car.

The Verge says the screen "looks like it could've been pulled off a Lenovo workstation pilfered from an office cubicle." Wired calls the interior "sleek and minimalist." Road & Track deems the whole setup "completely bizarre."

Reacting to the reaction, CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the unusual interior will "make sense" later on.

Whatever your take, the setup is crucial because it saves the company significant time and money in both the r&d and production phases of the Model 3.

"That's a huge part of it," said Ed Kim, vice president of industry analysis at AutoPacific. "The Model 3 is a car that even if you weren't accounting for the EV powertrain, it's pretty high-tech for $35,000," so it's important that Tesla look for every way it can save money and headaches.

The single screen also allows the company to build a single version of the car for right- and left-hand-drive markets, swapping only the steering wheel rather than a complicated instrument panel.

Time is of the essence for the Model 3. Musk insists deliveries will begin by the end of 2017. Many analysts expect deliveries in meaningful numbers won't happen until 2018 at the earliest. Barclays Capital says 2019 is more likely.

The Model 3 also has broad implications for Tesla since it moves the automaker out of the realm of niche luxury vehicles and into more mainstream offerings. It's part of Tesla's plan to build 500,000 vehicles a year by 2020, a feat that will pose a daunting challenge for an automaker unaccustomed to that kind of volume.

Despite the high stakes, Tesla isn't alone in its approach to simplifying its interiors.

Car companies are beginning to consolidate screens and computers inside their cars to save money, speed development and make it easier to deliver over-the-air software updates, said Danny Shapiro, senior director of automotive at Santa Clara, Calif., chipmaker Nvidia Corp., whose customers include Audi, BMW and Tesla.

He cited the "virtual cockpit" in the Audi TT and R8 sports cars, which use a single display behind the steering wheel to handle navigation, entertainment and phone calls alongside the speedometer and other traditional gauges.

"Automakers want to streamline development, cut costs and create a system that gets better over time," Shapiro said. "A single, centralized car computer that serves many functions and controls many aspects of the car can be updated much more easily than a highly distributed system."

Going from two screens and two computers down to one of each can free up funds for a bigger screen and faster computer. Such a system is more expensive than the ones used today, Shapiro said, but "it is certainly less expensive than two of them."

The rise of autonomous driving during the Model 3's lifetime also likely played a role in its interior design, Kim said, especially since Tesla's Autopilot hardware will be standard equipment.

"If you are not actively driving the car anymore, does everything need to be in the same place? Probably not."

Musk promises that Tesla will announce more details on the Model 3 closer to its production date, in part two of the car's unveiling. That news "takes things to another level" the CEO said in a March 30 tweet.

Four days later, Musk tweeted that the lack of dashboard or head-up display will "make sense" at that point.

This secondary debut will include a look at the Model 3's production steering wheel and system, which wasn't shown at the car's launch in March.

"It feels like a spaceship," the SpaceX founder said in another tweet.
 
#733 ·
400,000

A Tesla VP speaking at a conference a few days ago said about 400,000 reservations so far.

“The Model 3, the car for which the company was really set up to build, exceeded all of our expectations, as far as the rate at which we received reservations. Something approaching 400,000 people have already put down … a thousand dollars to reserve this car.”
 
#734 ·
Other than them both being 200mile EV's I really think a Bolt buyer and a Model 3 buyer are very different. I suspect the Bolt will be far more appealing to family types like me who value that taller passenger and hatch space whereas I see the Model 3 buyer as someone who simply wanted an affordable Model S.

Just my opinion.

Also, 400k deposits, great, good for Tesla. that is genuinely a HUGE accomplishment. :beer::thumbup:

But they've never produced cars in that number, and don't have the capacity to do so at this time. So there is still a whole lot of "wait and see" with that car, promises made and deposits take but we haven't even seen the final prototype.

I do love the irony of Apple/Jobs haters lining up to praise and preorder Tesla/Musk promises. :D
 
#737 ·
Good points, typically a company trying to ramp up production to numbers they've never seen means quality goes way down.
Personally, I'm not jumping on the Tesla bandwagon for sometime... but it all has to start somewhere.
 
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