Last Thursday, Elon Musk revealed the highly anticipated new Tesla Model 3 car. The idea behind releasing a new Tesla model was for it to be more accessible for the middle class, so the car is priced at a very reasonable $35,000. The car is not being sold yet, however customers were pre-ordering the new models on Thursday by putting down $1,000 for the cars which they will be receiving in late 2017. Within 24 hours of the release, there were already 180,000 pre-orders confirmed. Now, there are over 200,000 pre-orders and Elon Musk wants to open a manufacturing site in Europe to increase production so that these thousands of people can get their cars sooner. During the day of the pre-order, I heard on the radio that people were camping outside of the Tesla Vancouver store, so that they could be the first people to pre-order their cars. I thought this was crazy that there was so much hype around the new release of the car- I even received snapchats of some of my friends taking videos of themselves making their orders! I thought this was unrealistic and bizarre because I was thinking “how can people my age afford a Tesla!?”, but this was before I actually read about the selling price and features of the car! Now it makes sense what all of these fans were raving about!
It’s a smart move by Tesla that they decided to build a new car specifically designed and modelled for the average working middle class. There was a huge positive reaction after the first Tesla cars were released a few years ago, and I’m sure most of us would love to drive a Tesla ourselves, if they weren’t so expensive! Now with the competitively-priced Model 3, driving a Tesla has become just as accessible as driving any other new car! I think this bold move is a great explanation of Elon Musk’s goal on Tesla:
“Our goal when we created Tesla a decade ago was the same as it is today: to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible.”
I’m excited to see more people driving electric cars on the road, as they are becoming more accessible, affordable and trendy! It will be interesting to see the shift in our society from gas cars to electric cars in my lifetime, and other new innovations that will be available to us!
