Tesla Rolls Out Its Very first Model Trio, and It’s Elon’s
It’s eventually here: The Model Trio, Tesla’s $35,000 electrified gamechanger. A single black Model three spinned off the production line Friday with a serial number all its own, kicking off a company-defining six months. The car will belong to Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO and co-founder, who collective pictures of it on Twitter over the weekend. 
Tesla has already taken in harshly half a billion dollars in Model three deposits, at $1,000 apiece, and its proposed ramp-up schedule would have it rivaling well-established U.S. market peers like BMW and Mercedes by year’s end. The only thing standing inbetween Tesla and being the world’s very first mass-market electrical carmaker is proving it can build, supply, and service enormous numbers of these vehicles—without sacrificing quality.
One down, millions more to go. 
The production acceleration will be slow at very first. Tesla plans to mitt over the keys to thirty cars at a launch celebration on July 28. It then envisions building one hundred cars—less than three a day—for the month of August, according to a series of Twitter posts by Musk last week. September will bring another 1,500 cars, and the ramp will build to a rate of 20,000 cars a month by December, Musk said. It’s an aggressive schedule that will more than dual Tesla’s total production rate in six months, and then quintuple it by the end of next year.
If Tesla achieves all of Musk’s targets, it will build more battery-powered cars next year than all of the world’s automakers combined in 2016. U.S. sales under Musk’s two thousand eighteen targets would significantly outpace the BMW three Series and the Mercedes C-Class, the best-selling petite luxury cars in the country.
Tesla, by tradition, produces the very first fresh car off the line to the very first customer to pay total price once the car officially goes on sale. Musk’s collection includes the very first Tesla Roadster and the very first Model X—but not the very first Model S. That trophy belongs to Tesla board of directors member Steve Jurvetson, who told the Chicago Tribune in two thousand ten that he scored the very first of Tesla’s flagship sedans by writing out a check just before a board meeting and throwing it across the table. The right to the very first Model three was won by board member Ira Ehrenpreis, who then gifted it to Musk for his 46th bday, on June 28.
Here’s what we know about what might be coming next:
The rollout embarks. Key handoffs will begin in California and budge east, focusing very first on employees of Palo Alto, California-based Tesla and Musk’s SpaceX rocket company, based in Hawthorne, California, then on other U.S. reservation holders who stood in line before the car’s unveiling some fifteen months ago. People who place fresh orders today won’t receive their cars until the middle of next year, according to Tesla’s website.
The carmaker will be taking things leisurely at very first, as it looks to avoid the disastrous rollout of the Model X, which was marred by mis-aligned bod panels, software glitches, problems with the falcon wing doors and spaceship-like seats, and a fleet-wide recall tied to a seatbelt issue. (These faults have largely been addressed, and the Model X is now the fourth best-selling luxury SUV in the U.S.) 
There’s tremendous request for the Model three among Tesla’s 30,000 employees—most of whom are incapable to afford the pricier Model S and Model X. Musk is putting that interest to use, releasing the very first several thousand Model 3s to employee reservation holders. Any problems identified during the early rollout can be quickly addressed at the factory.
Features are being stripped down. Over the past few months, Musk has consistently attempted to downplay expectations for fresh features. The car that spinned off the production line on Friday shouldn’t stray far from the original prototype unveiled in March 2016. There will only be one display—the car’s 15-inch touchscreen—with no extra gauges or heads-up-display projected at the windshield. 
Additionally, the dual-motor all-wheel drive and high spectacle versions of the Model three will be delayed for six to nine months to keep initial production as ordinary as possible. 
Fresh Aero wheels are coming. Tesla was granted a patent on June six for this fresh aerodynamic wheel face, one of two designs that the company has deployed on the test cars seen driving around the country in latest months. (The other design is shown in the production car above).
Tesla shortly suggested Aero wheels for the Model S in 2013, but they were considered unattractive by many consumers and were quickly pulled from the market. At the time, Tesla said they could boost the car's range by three to four percent.  
How far is Tesla going with Autopilot for the launch? Last October, Musk set some wild timelines for total self-driving capabilities in the Tesla fleet. The company upgraded the hardware suite of its total line-up of cars to eight surround cameras, twelve ultrasonic sensors, a forward radar, and a massively powerful fresh computer. He said it was all the hardware that will be needed for driverless transport. By the end of 2017, Musk said, he hoped to demonstrate a cross-country excursion without any driver interaction.
So far, Tesla hasn’t backed off those predictions. For the past nine months, it’s been charging customers an extra $Trio,000 for an option called “Utter Self-Driving Capability.” However, the software still hasn’t been released to make any fresh features available, and to date, the pricey option adds no extra functionality. 
Musk has dropped a number of hints that those features will commence rolling out around the launch of the Model Trio. In January, I asked him at what point “Utter Self-Driving Capability” will depart from the “Enhanced Autopilot” features. His response, via a post on Twitter: “Trio months maybe, six months certainly.” Six months would coincide with the July launch. 
Movie Captures Very first Model three Photoshoot
Tesla has yet to release a detailed list of the Model Trio’s specs, features, and pricing, more of which will be exposed at the car’s launch party on July 28. Here’s what has been disclosed so far: 
- The Model three goes from zero to sixty miles per hour in Five.6 seconds, according to a spec sheet Tesla published in May. That’s swifter than the base model BMW three Series and the Mercedes-Benz C Class, the leading cars in the compact luxury space.
- The car will be able to drive at least 215 miles on a single charge, with options to upgrade to a fatter battery. Last year, Musk said the company will shove for even greater range.
- The roof is an almost continuous sheet of glass that spreads from the front of the car to the rear to give riders a sense of openness. The layered glass is designed to block UV rays and manage warmth.
- All Model 3s will come tooled with hardware for Tesla’s Autopilot features and high-speed Supercharging. Customers will have to pay to use them, however pricing hasn’t been made public.
- The Model three will have two trunks with about fourteen cubic feet of combined storage space, and the rear seats will fold down to accommodate longer items. That’s comparable to other cars in its class but less than half the storage volume of the Model S sedan.
- The bod is made of a mix of lightweight aluminum and cheaper steel, primarily the latter.
- Tesla’s signature touch-screen control panel will be flipped on its side and shrunk from seventeen inches to fifteen inches. It treats everything from navigation to speed.
- The traditional instrument panel under the dash is gone entirely.  
- The car is designed to fit five adults cosily, in part by pushing the front passengers forward to provide more legroom in the back seat. 
- Rear-wheel drive is standard, with a future option for dual-motor all-wheel drive. 
- Reservation holders who want all-wheel drive or other delayed options will be able to defer their purchase without entirely losing their place in line. 
- The number of Tesla’s high-speed charging stations will dual by the end of the year to Ten,000. Slower destination chargers will leap from 9,000 to 15,000.
The era of the Model three has begun. Now it’s time for Tesla to truly get to work.