Tesla aims for mainstream ride as 'Model 3' deliveries begin

PanARMENIAN.Net - Customers will finally get behind the wheels of Model 3 cars on Friday, July 28 as Tesla tries to veer from its high-end image with a more affordable electric car, AFP says.

Tesla founder and boss Elon Musk planned to mark the occasion with a ceremony at the company's plant in the city of Fremont near San Francisco.

An initial batch of 30 Model 3 cars was expected to go mainly to Tesla employees.

Production of the electric car aimed at the broader market -- with a price of $35,000 -- will ramp up quickly, Musk said, with 100 in August and 1,500 or more in September.

Tesla aims to produce 5,000 units of the Model 3 a week this year, and 10,000 units a week in 2018.

The mid-range model is a crucial piece of Musk's ambitions to transform Tesla into a large-scale vehicle manufacturer. It will allow the firm, started in 2003, to produce about 500,000 vehicles in 2018 and a million by 2020.

California-based Tesla currently sells only two luxury models of its electric vehicles: the "Model S" sedan and the "Model X" SUV whose base price starts at around $80,000. It produced only 84,000 cars in 2016.

The Model 3 sparked such strong demand that customers placing orders now are told they can expect delivery sometime in mid-2018.

The rush of pre-orders allowed Tesla to recently become the biggest US car company in terms of market capitalization, despite the fact that General Motors (GM) and Ford produce millions of cars per year and Tesla has yet to make a profit.

Musk, who also runs cosmic transport firm SpaceX and tunnel drilling enterprise The Boring Company, wrote in Tesla's early years that the strategy was to enter the car market at the high-end, then push prices down and volume up with subsequent models.

Combined sales of Model S and Model X vehicles in the first half of this year were estimated to tally from 47,000 to 50,000.

By comparison, Germany-based Volkswagen and Toyota in Japan Toyota each sell more than 10 million cars per year.