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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: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 04 2015, @01:01PM
...and appearances wouldn't change every model update, aerodynamics were mostly optimized a long time ago.
Here's one version of what optimized aerodynamics looks like,
http://aquaflector.com/ev/sylph.jpg [aquaflector.com]
This is a working car, built by a friend, through the 80s and 90s. This one uses a motorcycle engine and is registered at a motorcycle (three wheeler) as an end run on the regulations for cars. The original concept was electric, until the designer realized just how limiting batteries were 30 years ago. Drag coefficient of 0.1 was measured on a 1/6 size wind tunnel model (with no internal airflow).