Tesla Model 3: new wheels and ‘007’ black prototype spotted

As we are getting closer to the start of production in July, it seems that Tesla Model 3 sightings are becoming increasingly frequent.

So frequent that there’s hardly ever anything new to see on those sightings at this point, but now new wheels have been spotted on a Model 3 released candidate.

As CEO Elon Musk confirmed this week, wheel size is probably one of the only options that early Model 3 buyers will be able to choose – that and the color.

Sizes are going to be 18″ and 19″.

But what about wheel designs? When Tesla first unveiled the Model 3, it also unveiled 3 new wheel designs with the vehicle. At the time, they were fairly well received and Musk said that “they spent a lot of time” on those wheels and that they would make it to production.

After Tesla launched the release candidate program, almost all prototypes were spotted with the Turbine-like wheel designs and the two others were not seen… until now.

Near the Fremont factory this week, TheBayAreaRacing Youtube channel spotted a new white release candidate featuring the partially covered wheel design first seen in March 2016:

Though the first thing you see in this video is not the wheels but the horrible panel gaps.

As usual, a reminder that Tesla’s release candidates are being tested at different stages of readiness and therefore, it’s not necessarily representative of the production version, which is expected to be unveiled in July.

The release candidate program exists specifically to fix those kinds of issues.

Another new release candidate was also spotted this week. It could be auditioning to be the next “Bond car”:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BVBlRsqF1Km/

We recently reported that Tesla appears to be adding numbers to its Model 3 release candidates since late last month. It’s not clear if they are sequential numbers and could be an indicator of the size of the fleet. If that’s the case, ‘#67’ is the highest spotted so far.

Interestingly, early release candidate sightings were concentrated around Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto, but they have expanded to everywhere around the Bay Area – all the way up to San Francisco and down to Tesla’s Fremont factory, where release candidates have spotted on the test track recently.

We even received reports of sightings in Illinois and around Ohio.

It makes sense for Tesla to be expanding its test program for the Model 3 as it prepares to launch production in Fremont by the end of the next month, which is still on schedule, according to CEO Elon Musk at the shareholder meeting this week.