California, Friday night. A party. Fanfare. Applause. And 30 brand spanking new Tesla Model 3s charging in the wings. Not your average Friday night west coast party, but a hugely important one.
A couple of nights ago, Elon Musk revealed the first 30 full production versions of the brand new Tesla Model 3, the firm’s affordable, baby electric car. You’ll know that it’s had hundreds of thousands of online real estate devoted to it, along with hundreds of thousands of pre-orders, too.
“The major challenge for the next six to nine months is how do we build a huge number of cars,” Elon Musk explains to a rapturous audience in California. “Frankly, we’re going to be in production hell,” he laughs. The audience, comprised of everyone who has worked on the Model 3, laughs with him.
“Welcome to hell!” Musk says to them. Cue applause.
On the other side of production hell however, sits something potentially seismic. Could this be the car to finally bring EVs to the mass market? Only time will tell. For now, we’ve compiled all the latest stats and prices on the Model 3 – a car Musk reckons is a tough cookie to beat in this price range.
The base version is a car that starts from $35,000 (RM150,000). This gets an estimated range of 354km, does 0-97kph in 5.6s and tops out at 209kph. It’ll ‘supercharge’ to 209km of range in 30 minutes, or 48km of range per hour on a home charger.
Inside you get a 15in touchscreen display, dual zone climate control, sat nav, wi-fi, keyless entry, voice activated controls, Bluetooth, 60/40 split folding rear seats, a back-up camera, power mirrors and one-touch electric windows.
It comes with eight cameras, twelve ultrasonic sensors, six front and two side airbags, stability and traction control, and even a tyre pressure monitor. The battery gets an eight year, 100,000 mile (160,934km) warranty, while the car itself gets a four year, 50,000 mile one.
The second version is dubbed ‘Long Range’, and is a $9,000 option over the base car’s $35k (so $44k in total, or RM188,400), and this is where it gets interesting. The battery now gives 499km of range, does 0-97kph in 5.1s and tops out at 225kph. So it’s the quick-ish one. This one supercharges at a rate of 274km of range per 30 minutes, or home charges at 60km per hour.
Later of course, there’ll be all-wheel-drive, dual motor versions – including a Ludicrous option – for even more quickness. We’ll get more info on that later on in the Model 3’s life span.
Spend $5,000 (RM21,400) on the Premium upgrade pack, and you get heated, 12-way adjustable seats, wood detailing, a ‘premium’ audio setup (surround, sub, tweeters etc), a tinted glass roof, LED fogs, and a covered centre console.
Another $5,000 gets you Enhanced Autopilot, that matches traffic speed, keeps you in your lane, changes lanes, goes from one motorway to the next, leaves the motorway and parks at your destination. Add $3k to this $5k and you get full self-driving capability, that requires “no action by the person in the driver’s seat”.
The whole car measures just under 4.7m long, 1.4m high, and 1.85m wide. Which is roughly the same as a BMW 3 Series, for perspective. It weighs 1,609kg for the base car, 1,730kg for the Long Range version, is made from steel and aluminium, gets double wishbones up front and a multi-link at the back, electric power steering, ABS and 18s (or 19s for $1,500 more).
“You will not be able to find a better car, gasoline or electric, in this price range, that is anywhere near as great,” Musk tells us.
First Model 3 Handovers from Tesla, Inc on Vimeo.