The plan wasn’t clear when CEO Elon Musk talked about it in February, but today he confirmed that Tesla plans to unveil the final production version of the Model 3 in July.
July
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 13, 2017
It ends recent speculation that suggested Tesla could unveil the vehicle in June ahead of production.
The speculation sparked from the fact that the company was offering invites to a “Tesla product launch event” through its referral program and the “prizes” needed to be claimed by June 2nd.
Instead, Tesla seems to be timing the reveal of the production version with the first deliveries, which will likely be to Tesla insiders and employees first.
The timing is interesting for a few reasons since it also involves the launch of Tesla’s online design studio for the Model 3 and therefore, the confirmation of all the features and the pricing.
For employees and insiders, it’s likely going to happen within the next two months in order for Tesla to start building a more concrete backlog, but it’s not likely to be available to general reservation holders before the final reveal in July.
While it’s not concrete yet, the timeline, as we understand it now based on the information released by Musk and Tesla, consists of the start low-volume Model 3 production for employees, which we estimate to be over 10,000 between Tesla and SpaceX, in July.
At that time, Tesla will also unveil the final production version of the vehicle and open the online design studio gradually to reservation holders in the order they reserved and in markets where it will first be available (US west coast to east coast, Canada, Europe, etc. in that order).
As promised, the company will send a fleet of Model 3 vehicles to its stores for test drives. We expect the process to be similar to the Model X launch where only reservation holders were allowed to schedule test drives due to the high demand and low availability for test drive units. The process helped convert reservations into actual orders.
The entire process should then start to be smoother and closer to Tesla’s normal business model as the production ramps up. Tesla currently plans for 1,000 units per week in July and 5,000 units per week in September, but that’s if everything goes according to plan, which is rarely the case.
With all the recent sightings of the first Model 3 release candidates, we are starting to get a better idea of the final production design, but there are still a lot of details to be revealed in term of features. What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.
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