Tesla Model 3 New Car orders reach 276,000

Published Date: 5th Apr 2016

Elon Musk Tesla founder and chief executive announced pre-orders of the electric car makers's much-anticipated Model 3 amount to 276,000.

The American-based car maker revealed the new saloon car - its cheapest electric car to date – just last week. Pre-orders of the Model 3 will not necessarily all translate into actual sales when the car is released, with first deliveries in late 2017.

The Tesla Model 3 Pre-orders won’t all turn into actual sales, but a large portion will. The huge amount of pre-orders is down to the huge anticipation of the new Tesla. The very first deliveries are scheduled for late 2017, so if you’re thinking of getting your name on the list be prepared to wait a while.

You can Pre-order the Tesla Model 3 in dozens of countries that include the India, Republic of Ireland, Brazil, UK, New Zealand and China. To make a pre-order you must put down $1,000 deposit to reserve you’re Tesla Model 3. The 276,000 pre-orders are great news for Tesla as it gives them a cash injection of $27,600,000 towards the production of the new cars.

Just after the announcement of the huge number of pre-orders for the Tesla model 3, Elon Musk took to twitter to say "definitely going to need to rethink production planning".

£620m Spent on Research and Development in 2015

Elon Musk has explained that his goal is to make more than half a million electric vehicles a year, once Tesla is at full capacity. The Tesla model 3 starts at $35,000 (£24,500) and has a range of 215 miles (346km) per full charge.

50,580 Tesla electric vehicles were delivered in 2015. A large number of these were the Model S saloon, which became the world’s best selling pure-electric vehicle overtaking Nissan's Leaf in the process.

This didn’t stop the car tech giant posting a net loss of $889m (£620m) for 2015, partly because it spent $718m on research and development over the period.

This leaves Tesla with a cash reserve of $1.2bn, a dramatic decrease from $1.9bn a year earlier.

Tesla is also facing competition from electric cars with a similar price and range that will become available before the planned release of the Model 3, including GM's Chevy Bolt and BYD's Qin EV300.