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Tesla Model 3 to Start Production This Friday, Two Weeks Early

In a move very uncharacteristic to the company, Tesla has announced that the start of Model 3 production is being moved early by two weeks. The way the news transpired, however, is much more familiar: through an Elon Musk tweet.
Tesla Model 3 release candidate 1 photo
Photo: gamerfreak4life via Reddit
You can almost feel the CEO's delight as he wrote a very short message announcing the very hotly-anticipated electric sedan had "passed all regulatory requirements for production two weeks ahead of schedule." Musk continued by saying he expects the "SN1" to be completed on Friday.

The "SN1" is the first mass-produced Model 3 - the Serial Number 1 car that some billionaire will buy at an auction for a sum comparable to the GDP of a small country fifty years from now. The EV was supposed to enter production toward the end of the month, but Tesla managed to move things earlier, and we can bet you there isn't one person in those 400,000+ reservation holders that isn't ecstatic to hear about it.

After the whole Model X fiasco, Musk insisted the Model 3 would be kept simple precisely to avoid production bottlenecks and, of course, to keep the price down and fulfill the promised $35,000 base price tag. There were a lot of doubters, but it looks as though Tesla managed to pull it off.

Now, there is just one hurdle left to clear: the Model 3 needs to be a good car, one that's worthy of the Tesla name. It needs to offer decent performance, best-in-class range, and interior build quality that's at least on par with the rest of the manufacturers, something the Palo Alto company has been criticized for so far.

And from what we've seen so far, it's the interior that's raised the highest number of questions. Tesla opted to change the way things are done and remove the instrument cluster altogether. Instead, the driver gets a central-mounted horizontal screen that displays all the necessary information. Whether that layout will work or not remains to be seen, but Elon Musk is confident that it will.

Tesla also skipped on the beta-testing phase, insisting that ample computer simulations and its expertise can very well substitute the time-consuming process of building and running test vehicles. To minimize the chances of selling a faulty product, the first Model 3s will be delivered to board members and employees, which will essentially act as the final quality controllers. Or lab rats, if you will.

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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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