Tesla Motors reveals their Electric Car Model 3 for Mass Market

Tesla’s Model 3 is the Tesla company’s attempt to pitch an electric car to the mass market. The basic version will cost $35,000 which is nearly half the price of Tesla’s current lowest-cost model. It should last 215 miles on a charge and accelerate from 0 – 60 mph in under six seconds. At the launch and elsewhere customers began ordering the car ahead of its realse in 2017.

Tesla wants to build 500,000 cars a year, so it has teamed up with Panasonic to build a huge factory to make enough lithium-ion batteries – the Gigafactory.

The Gigafactory should be able to produce 500,000 batteries a year. That should drive down their price significantly.

At the moment, in many electric cars, half the cost of the car is a battery. So if they can drive that down, the economics of this can stack up and they can sell to the mass market.

But the competition is growing. One of the challenges for Tesla is that General Motors are likely to get their Bolt vehicle to market before them and therefore steal a march.

>> Tesla Model 3 vs Chevy Bolt - The Race of the electric car

So Tesla have been very successful in the premium market. They are moving into the mass market. But the electric car competition is actually hotting up.

Tesla lost $889m last year, so a lot is riding on the Model 3 being a success