Pre-bookings open in India for Tesla Model 3

American luxury electric car maker Tesla is going to bring its most affordable car to India. Tesla Motors founder and chief executive Elon Musk in a tweet on Thursday said the company has added more countries to the pre-order page for Tesla Model 3, which includes India, Brazil, South Africa, South Korea, Singapore, New Zealand, and Ireland.

The Model 3 pre-order page lets customers book a Tesla by paying $1,000 (roughly Rs66,000). The fee is refundable in case one chooses to cancel. The form also lets customers sign up for test driving a Model S, the company's premium sedan.

In case you were worried about the lack of a network of chargers to power Tesla's electric cars, Musk tweeted that the car would come with an India-wide supercharger network. Superchargers can charge Tesla cars from 0 to 100 per cent in roughly 75 minutes and are currently offered free to those who own Tesla cars. It's unclear whether the network will be free for Model 3 owners in India.

Tesla had at an event on Thursday in California announced that the Model 3 will be available in 2017 with a starting price of $35,000 or roughly Rs23 lakh (See: Tesla flooded with pre-orders as it unveils Model 3).

The company manufactures its cars in the US, which means that the price of a Tesla Model 3 will be much higher in India as it will have to be imported. Duties on imported cars are upward of 125 per cent in India.

The company announced that it plans to expand the number of Tesla stores across the world from 215 to 441. This means that we could see the opening of a Tesla store in India, if the company intends it as a major market.

Musk said the car will be able to cover at least 346 km on a single charge and that the car will offer Tesla's autopilot feature. The car isn't expected to be available until late in 2017, but that hasn't stopped people from pre-ordering it. Musk said the car already has 115,000 pre-orders. Quite a few Tesla fans in the US had camped overnight to pre-order the Model 3.