Tesla Unveils Model 3

A few notes and observations:

  • This car looks impressive, and with a starting price of just $35,000, it’s built to sell. As Musk explains on stage, this is the car they’ve been working toward — one for the mass market.
  • Tesla really has a great story.
  • “At Tesla we don’t make slow cars” — great line from Musk, on the quality of the baseline model.
  • At just 22 minutes, the event was wonderfully succinct. If you haven’t watched the whole event, I recommend it.
  • I thought Musk was a little under-rehearsed.
  • The crowd enthusiasm was palpable. Tesla took over 115,000 pre-orders before anyone had even seen the car. That is trust — and rather incredible for a car that they don’t intend to ship until the end of next year.
  • I think the car looks a little weird from the front, because it lacks a grill. But perhaps that’s just skating to where the puck is going to be in the EV world.

Extremely impressive overall. Tesla has a lot to do between now and putting hundreds of thousands of these Model 3s on the road, but it certainly looks like they’re building something amazing.

★ Friday, 1 April 2016