Bad news for early Tesla Model 3 reservation holders who were hoping to order the vehicle with dual motor all-wheel-drive. Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that the dual motor Model 3 will not be available “until next year”.
It means that the vehicles planned for production in 2017 – starting in July – can only be configured with a single motor rear-wheel-drive powertrain.
It’s likely to be frustrating for the people who placed reservations on the first day hoping to order the higher-end version of the Model 3, but Musk confirmed that they are “minimizing configuration complexity to keep the production ramp on schedule”.
He confirmed the news on Twitter today:
No, we are minimizing configuration complexity to keep the production ramp on schedule. RWD only for early production, just like Model S.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2017
He added that dual motor Model 3 production is expected to start in “6 to 9 months”, which mean that it should still follow closely behind the rear-wheel-drive production.
It’s likely to change the plans of a lot of reservation holders – mainly for US reservation holders since it sounds like the all-wheel-drive version will be ready by the time the vehicle receives homologation in other countries. Canada is likely to be first and AWD is always more popular up north due to the climate.
Consequently, the “performance version” of the Model 3 is not expected to become available until after the launch of the dual motor in 2018:
Yeah, probably a year from now. S will still win on acceleration though, due to having more space for a larger battery.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2017
Musk also confirmed that the right-hand-drive version of the Model 3 is not expected before summer 2018.
Should be summer next year. Sorry, really wish we could get RHD done sooner. We truly are working as fast as we can.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2017
It’s likely to be disappointing for a lot of people, but at least reservation holders have now a better idea of what to expect and they can plan accordingly.
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