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Tesla CEO Elon Musk has announced that his company's "mass market sedan", the Model 3, can be pre-ordered in March 2016 for $35,000. The cars will not be available until 2017 at the earliest. From CNBC:
What's taking so long, you ask? Right now, the batteries that would power the Model 3 would cost about as much as the car is slated to. Tesla is building an enormous lithium-ion battery manufacturing facility in Nevada to make its own batteries for far less money — the "Gigafactory" mentioned in Musk's tweet.
Not much more can be revealed about the Model 3 except that, as Musk mentioned cryptically during a Q&A session on Reddit, "It won't look like other cars." What does that mean, exactly? We'll find out in March.
In the meantime, you can order yourself a new Model X — if you have the cash. The entry level model will cost around $5,000 more than a Model S with the same options, Musk wrote in yet another tweet — though you can easily spend well into the six figure range for the "Signature" high-end series.
Tesla customers will begin receiving their Model X "all-electric SUVs" beginning on Sept. 29.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 04 2015, @11:41AM
That certainly describes me. I'm ready to trade in my current car the moment the Model 3 becomes available. I have had ample opportunity to drive the BMW i3 EV and Nissan Leaf, and they're fine, but Tesla is the only company that truly gets EVs and how they can employ information technology intelligently, and they're the only company that's fully committed to EVs. Everyone else is hedging their bets with half steps.
I am curious where you have gotten "hundreds of thousands of people," though. Have you read that somewhere?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday September 04 2015, @01:22PM
And me. My plan is to drive my current relatively efficient gas powered car (a Metro, but alas, with an automatic transmission because other family members can't drive a stick shift) until the wheels fall off or a decent electric car hits the market. Batteries are what's holding everything back. An electric motor is 10x better than a combustion engine, the problem has been that a gas tank is 20x better than a battery. Gasoline powered cars are dead the moment batteries become good enough. 15 minutes to recharge enough to go another 200 miles, a lifetime of 1000 recharge cycles, and ability to hold most of a charge for a month still won't be as good as a gas tank, but that may be good enough.
When that moment comes, we may see the same thing we saw with CRTs and flat screens in 2009, when CRTs vanished from store shelves nearly overnight. That shift may have been made more dramatic by the end of the collusion to hold flat screen prices artificially high. I'd noticed that unlike pretty much all other technology, for years flat screen prices refused to drop much, and there was nothing under $100. I think now it will go more like the shift from vinyl records to audio CDs. Most people will make the switch, but the old tech will hang on thanks to a few who like the old method better despite being objectively inferior. Another thing I'm looking forward to is quieter streets. But some people like noisy exhausts. They're the same people who sneer at the Prius and little cars for being too gay, try to arouse car envy in others. Seems Real Men have to show the world, especially the ladies, that they have power to waste, money to burn, and the car has been one of the top means of doing that.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Friday September 04 2015, @02:54PM
That is quite true. It seems a sort of simian display: "Watch me beat my chest!"
Amen! My family and I have had some experience the last six months borrowing my brother-in-law's BMW i3 EV, and we've discovered another really pleasant benefit of driving a quiet car: we can talk in the cabin without shouting.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2015, @03:30PM
> Tesla is the only company that truly gets EVs and how they can employ information technology intelligently,
They also Big Data the ever-living shit out of their owners. Until this year the GPS didn't even work without an operational cellular connection.
Every move you make, every breath you take, every single day and every word you say, every game you play, every night you stay, Elon will be watching you.