The Tesla Model 3 has been making the news for being the most affordable luxury electric vehicle from the company. Now the company claims reservations for the vehicle have already crossed the 276,000 mark. The EV firm started accepting reservations on March 31.
Great start for the Model 3
The figure is too good and is representative of evolution not just for Tesla, but for electric cars as well. Late Sunday evening, CEO Elon Musk revealed the number of reservations via a tweet after updating the figure several times since the unveiling of the prototype Model 3 on Thursday evening.
“All efforts focused on accelerating the ramp,” Musk said.
He also informed his followers of the company’s plans to send gifts to customers who waited in line at Tesla stores as a token of appreciation. The Model 3 will be a rear-wheel-drive car and will offer the option of all-wheel-drive to customers tweeted Musk on Sunday.
The Tesla Model 3, which is due for release in late 2017, is a sedan with seating for five, and on a full charge, it can travel 215 miles. The vehicle takes less than 6 seconds to accelerate from 0 to 60 mph, and the starting price is $35,000.
How big are the numbers for Tesla?
A sense of the scale of the backlog can be gathered from the fact that BMW sold 95,000 3-series sedans in 2015 in the U.S. BMW’s 3-series is touted as the U.S.’s best-selling compact luxury car. The size and price of the Model 3 is similar to those of BMW’s sedan, and it is expected to outsell BMW 3-series sedans in the first year of production–provided Tesla is capable of making enough cars, says The WSJ.
Musk believes the average Model 3 will cost about $42,000 with options, and on this basis, the 276,000 reservations equate to a huge backlog of orders worth $11.6 billion. Tesla’s global revenues were about $4 billion last year. To date, the EV firm has shipped about 110,000 cars, and most of them have been Model S sedans.
Tesla at times has struggled with manufacturing and is still slowly ramping production of the sport-utility vehicle it launched late last year, the Model X. Musk has set a goal of selling 500,000 cars a year by 2020.
