Tesla Motors recently unveiled the Tesla Model 3, and the new design approach seems to have gone straight to the hearts of ecofriendly fans.
The car is supposed to be the first Tesla electric vehicle that targets the masses, and numbers of preliminary orders seem to support that. The simplest way to cater to a larger audience's needs is to tweak the pricing, and the automotive company did just that. The base price of the Model 3 is $35,000, which holds no candle to the Model S and Model X, both of which scored price tags of about $100,000 at their launch.
Very little official information about the performance of the vehicle is known. The only detail we can vouch for is that the car speeds up from 0 to 60 miles per hour in under 6 seconds and packs a battery able to keep it running for 215 miles.
At the event, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk noted that 115,000 people already preordered the latest vehicle before the official unveiling. A later update showed that as much as 150,000 Tesla Model 3s were preordered, and the number is constantly growing.
Automotive enthusiasts who like big numbers should know that the preorders stacked $115 million in deposits. Add that to the potential sales which are estimated at reaching $4 billion and you will have a perspective of Tesla's surging success.
The figures are impressive, especially considering that Tesla delivered merely 50,580 vehicles during 2015. It also should be noted that not all preorders convert into sales, but the interest gauges the popularity of the company.
An impressive number of people waited in line to make sure they preorder the Tesla Model 3 as early as possible, as this Twitter post shows.
Longest line EVER #Model3https://t.co/EafMhK3BDC
— Tesla Motors (@TeslaMotors) March 31, 2016
Anticipating the heightened demand, online preorders were delayed by an hour. The online preorders were initially scheduled to start at 18:30 Pacific Time, but to keep servers from overloading the process debuted at 19:30, one hour after the official launch.
Manufacturing of the Model 3 will begin towards the end of 2016, meaning the first owners will receive their latest Tesla car in 2017.
