Photo: Screenshot from YouTube
Ever since last week's Q1 2016 earnings call, Tesla seems to be putting everything on fast forward in a hurry to meet the rapidly growing demand for its cars, and particularly the new Model 3 compact sedan.
The car was unveiled on the last day of March and was very well received, bagging over 400,000 reservations so far, a quarter of which during the first 24 hours after the registrations were opened. But the new model isn't the only one prompting Tesla to rethink its production strategy. The Model S too had a 45 percent sales hike during the first quarter of 2016 compared to the previous year, and the Model X is just beginning to catch speed after the initial issues with some of the parts suppliers that delayed deliveries.
Still, all eyes are set on the Model 3, the company's first mass-selling product that will start at a price of $35,000 (before incentives) while still offering possibly the best maximum range for a fully-electric car in this segment. The prototype cars used for the launching event looked like they were pretty much ready to be rolled out, but they still lacked some finer details and left some questions unanswered.
Most importantly, it was the issue of the interior. People were a bit circumspect about the lack of an instrument cluster, and Tesla - through its unofficial spokesperson, Mr. Elon Musk himself - was reluctant to shed too much light on it. Instead, it used the mystical phrase "it will all make sense after the second presentation." If anybody knew just when exactly this second presentation would take place, maybe we'd be a little more relaxed about it.
Speculations seem to head towards two different ideas: one postulates that the Model 3 will be packed with autonomous features and so it will not need an instrument cluster, while the other focuses on the Model 3 using a new type of digital dashboard, relying on head-up displays and other things we haven't seen so far on production cars. The latter is further boosted by Felix Godard, Porsche Mission-e's interior designer, who reportedly joined Tesla last month.
Whatever the truth turns out to be, Tesla's CEO has now set a clear date for when all engineering aspects of the Model 3 need to be sorted out. Musk seems to be an end-of-month kind of guy, choosing June 30 as the fatidical day, after unveiling the Model 3 on March 31. In other words, we're just a little shy of two months away from the moment we can learn everything there is to know about the Model 3. Quoted by Teslarati, Musk said that "from an engineering standpoint, we are already almost complete with the design of Model 3. […] So I think we feel pretty good about engineering completion of the last items probably within six to eight weeks, thereabouts. And so we’re sort of completing the final release for tooling no later than the end of June."
Still, all eyes are set on the Model 3, the company's first mass-selling product that will start at a price of $35,000 (before incentives) while still offering possibly the best maximum range for a fully-electric car in this segment. The prototype cars used for the launching event looked like they were pretty much ready to be rolled out, but they still lacked some finer details and left some questions unanswered.
Most importantly, it was the issue of the interior. People were a bit circumspect about the lack of an instrument cluster, and Tesla - through its unofficial spokesperson, Mr. Elon Musk himself - was reluctant to shed too much light on it. Instead, it used the mystical phrase "it will all make sense after the second presentation." If anybody knew just when exactly this second presentation would take place, maybe we'd be a little more relaxed about it.
Speculations seem to head towards two different ideas: one postulates that the Model 3 will be packed with autonomous features and so it will not need an instrument cluster, while the other focuses on the Model 3 using a new type of digital dashboard, relying on head-up displays and other things we haven't seen so far on production cars. The latter is further boosted by Felix Godard, Porsche Mission-e's interior designer, who reportedly joined Tesla last month.
Whatever the truth turns out to be, Tesla's CEO has now set a clear date for when all engineering aspects of the Model 3 need to be sorted out. Musk seems to be an end-of-month kind of guy, choosing June 30 as the fatidical day, after unveiling the Model 3 on March 31. In other words, we're just a little shy of two months away from the moment we can learn everything there is to know about the Model 3. Quoted by Teslarati, Musk said that "from an engineering standpoint, we are already almost complete with the design of Model 3. […] So I think we feel pretty good about engineering completion of the last items probably within six to eight weeks, thereabouts. And so we’re sort of completing the final release for tooling no later than the end of June."
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