The Tesla Model 3 has been revealed in production form by the company’s CEO via his preferred communication medium, Twitter.
Elon Musk posted two photos of the new “affordable” luxury electric sedan: a full colour image of the car’s side, and a black and white photo showing part of the vehicle’s front end.
The outspoken Tesla chief revealed no further details about the car, simply stating the car pictured was the “first production Model 3“, and that “production unit 1 of Model 3 is now built and going through final checkout”.
At this stage, the public-facing Tesla website has not yet been updated with images or specifications of the production vehicle.
Last week, Musk took to Twitter, promising the company would begin deliveries of the highly anticipated sedan at the end of July. Production, he claimed, would ramp up “exponentially” from around 100 units in August to 20,000 in December.
A leaked specification sheet shows the Model 3 will seat five, have 396 litres worth of luggage space, a 0-60mph (0-97km/h) time of 5.6 seconds, and a range of over 346km.
In the US, the Model 3 will be priced from US$35,000 ($45,950) before state and federal government rebates. This places the new electric sedan head-to-head not only with the electric Chevrolet Bolt, but also the Audi A4, BMW 3-Series and Mercedes-Benz C-Class.
It’s been a busy week for the Tesla CEO. He was in Adelaide this week to confirm a deal with the South Australian government, with the solar panel, battery and electric car maker promising to install a 100MW/129MWh battery facility within 100 days or deliver it for free.
Claimed to be world’s largest battery installation, by some 70MW, for a power supply grid, the new battery will help store energy generated by the Hornsdale Wind Farm near Jamestown.
South Australia called for tenders to build a 100MW grid-scale battery pack after it suffered a series of state-wide blackouts.
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