Cars

Tesla’s Model 3 is here—with a 215-mile range, to be delivered in 2017 [Updated]

The $35,000 car is the company’s one shot at mass-market appeal—now it must deliver.

Megan Geuss – Apr 1, 2016 12:16 am | 567

HAWTHORNE, Calif.—Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk took the stage at the Tesla Design Studio to reveal the Tesla Model 3. “It’s very important to accelerate the transition to sustainable transport,” Musk said. “The last time there was this level of carbon concentration in the atmosphere was 11 million years ago.”

“Beyond global warming there are 53,000 deaths per year from auto emissions,” Musk added.

Tonight, Musk released the first official details on the company’s most important car to date, the Tesla Model 3. The base version of the all-electric vehicle will have a range of 215 miles, a continuous pane of glass on the rear roof, and front and rear trunks. Musk added that the car could comfortably fit a 7ft surfboard. The glass roof is similar to the one on the Model X, made with layers of glass to absorb and reflect UV light, keeping the car from getting too hot in the summer sun.

“This can fit five adults comfortably,” Musk said, noting that the Model 3 would have a compressed instrument panel, pushing the front seats slightly forward compared to a traditional gasoline car.

Musk also said that all Model 3s would come with supercharging standard, and he projected that Tesla would double the number of Superchargers around the world by the end of 2017.

In addition, the base version of the Model 3 will come with autopilot hardware, Musk said, as well as safety features that would keep the car among the top-ranking vehicles with US safety regulators.

The basic version of the car will be able to go 0 to 60mph in “less than six seconds,” Musk promised, adding, “At Tesla we don’t make slow cars.”

The car will be Tesla’s first mass-market vehicle, with a baseline price tag of just $35,000 (before any tax credits or incentives), compared to the more expensive Model S and Model X, which retail from $75,000 and $80,000, respectively. The Model 3 is essentially a pared-down version of the Model S, which debuted in 2012.

Tesla didn’t give a weight for the car, but Tesla’s vice president of engineering, Doug Field, said that the body of the car will be lighter than the Model S, using a mixture of aluminum and steel for the frame.

Musk has long maintained that his goal is to make electric vehicles accessible to everyone—not just the few who can afford to drop a year’s salary on a car. But besides being an environmentally conscious move, it’s a business imperative, too. Tesla has struggled with profitability, posting losses for 11 straight quarters as the company fought to meet its deadline for the Model X (which was announced in September 2015) and then strived to fulfill demand for the high-end electric SUV in subsequent months. On an earnings call in February, Tesla said it expected to end up back in the black again sometime this quarter.

Customers were able to place reservations for the Model 3 with a $1,000 deposit starting Thursday morning at Tesla stores around the country and online starting at 7:30pm PT this evening. The car is not expected to go into production until 2017, and some analysts point to the delays of the Model X as evidence that 2017 might be too early to expect the Model 3.

Tesla executives have long said that the key to the Model 3 getting off the ground is the Gigafactory, a massive battery-making facility that’s being built outside of Reno, Nevada, with the help of Panasonic and other partners. Only with the Gigafactory up and running will Tesla be able to achieve the economies of scale necessary to sell the Model 3 at such a low price. In its most recent earnings call, Tesla Chief Technical Officer J.B. Straubel noted that the Powerwall—Tesla’s home storage battery—is already being built at the nascent Gigafactory and added that Tesla was on track to deliver 15GWh of batteries to Tesla Energy and would use the rest of that capacity (which Tesla hopes will be 35GWh total by 2020) to build batteries for the Model 3.

Musk addressed the Gigafactory tonight, saying that the factory would eventually produce 50GWh of batteries. He also noted that Tesla’s current vehicle factory in Fremont was once able to produce 500,000 vehicles a year, which he said would be sufficient for ramped up production.

Even if Tesla delivers the Model 3 on time, it’s going to have significant competition from the Chevrolet Bolt. Automaker GM says it will offer the 200-mile-range, all-electric vehicle for around $30,000 after a $7,500 federal tax credit and says that the Bolt will go into production before the end of 2016, meaning customers may be able to get one in early 2017.

Tonight, Musk said that the Model 3 would be delivered at the end of 2017. He joked about the Model X’s delays, too, saying, “I do feel fairly confident it’ll be next year,” with a laugh.

The way federal tax credits are structured might also have an impact on Tesla’s Model 3 turnover. Federal tax credits for electric vehicles begin to phase out after an auto manufacturer sells more than 200,000 electric vehicles. According to the Los Angeles Times, Tesla has already sold about 67,000 vehicles that qualify for such tax rebates. The automaker says it plans to deliver 80,000 to 90,000 Model S and Model X vehicles in 2016, meaning only the very first reservations for the Model 3 could enjoy the full tax credit (unless the government extends the incentive).

That urgency was in part responsible for driving people to queue up outside of Tesla stores on Wednesday and Thursday. According to The Wall Street Journal, Barclay’s is estimating that 95,000 people will make reservations for the Model 3—more than three times as many as reserved a Model S when it debuted four years ago. At the end of tonight’s presentation, Musk said that 115,000 reservations had been placed for the new car.

After the presentation, Ars was able to get a seat in a pre-production prototype of the Model 3, which was driven by Doug Field, Tesla’s vice president of engineering. Although the drive was short—on the order of two or three minutes—we got a feel for the acceleration capabilities of the vehicle, which were considerable, and Field swerved the car from side to side, showing off its low center of gravity, given that it also uses a battery that lies along the floor of the vehicle. I sat in the front passenger seat, and it felt roomy enough that I had a hard time noticing that the front seats were slightly more forward than they normally would be in any other car.

Megan Geuss Staff editor

Megan is a staff editor at Ars Technica. She writes breaking news and has a background in fact-checking and research.

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