Tesla's Model 3 has been a long-time coming, but the company has now wrapped up production on its first units and offered the first official glimpse of its debut mass market sedan.
Since first announcing the Model 3 in 2014, Elon Musk and Tesla have allowed plenty of time for the hype to build. And build it did, with 325,000 signing up to buy the car within the first week of pre-orders opening last year. The Model 3 is key to Tesla's plans to drive the adoption of electric vehicles, and will offer a 215 mile (346 km) range and accelerate from 0 to 60 mph (97 km/h) in less than six seconds.
Priced at US$35,000, the car will be competing with the likes of the Chevrolet Bolt and unlike the Model S and Model X, is actually starting production ahead of schedule. A handover event on July 28 will see the first 30 Model 3 customers receive their vehicles, with Musk himself to claim unit number one.
From there, Tesla plans to build 100 units in August, ramp up to more than 1,500 in September and then be pumping out more than 20,000 per month by December. With quite a backlog to work through, the Tesla website says new orders will be delivered in mid-2018.