That's a lot of cash for Tesla's pocket, but comes with a huge amount of pressure to meet demand.
The Tesla Model 3, Tesla’s (more) affordable mass market EV offering that it has been working toward realising ever since its inception, has been a smash hit even before it was ever shown to the public.
The torrent of pure hype surrounding the car was, and still is, astounding. People waiting in lines that stretched across city blocks, the kind which usually accompanies a new and highly anticipated smartphone release, became common sights at Tesla showrooms across the globe.
And when it came time to its official unveil, one that was not sulleyed by pictorial leaks or loose lips, the world pretty much unanimously agreed it was worth the wait. In fact, the world will have to wait quite a while longer to see it on roads. Tesla says they plan to have the car released and delivered to customers by the end of 2017.
Even so, prior to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s keynote speech to debut the Model 3, at least 115,000 people have put down the US$1,000 deposit to reserve one. Since the unveil, however, that figure has not stopped climbing.
In a tweet on Sunday, 3rd April, Elon Musk revealed that the number or pre-orders have reached 276,000. And by now? Who knows the exact amount, but it will surely have climbed higher than that already huge figure.
Question is: how many pre-orders will Tesla accept until it closes the floodgates.
The pressure is very much on for Tesla, with customers to be clamouring for their cars to be delivered by the planned release date draws closer.
In all of 2015, Tesla produced roughly 51,000 cars, and number that is dwarfed by the number of pre-debut bookings alone. Tesla will have to dig deep to ramp up its overall production capacity in a relatively short period to keep up with demand.
Even with their new Gigafactory in Nevada, one of the world’s largest buildings by area (if not the largest), meeting the production output while ensuring a steadily high construction quality will be a tall order.
That said, Musk quashed at least some of the concerns surrounding the manufacturing capacity, saying that its even current production line in Fremont, California can handle 500,000 cars driving off its assembly lines per year.
