Tesla Model 3 finally out: Musk foresees ‘production hell’

The Tesla Model 3 is finally out – though not just yet for the buying public. Tesla chief executive Elon Musk on Friday officially unveiled the Model 3's first 30 production vehicles - all for Tesla employees - in front of several hundred company workers and journalists amid a roar of applause at a factory in Fremont, Calif.

Until now, Tesla had released few details about its newest vehicle and its pricing structure - one that would lower the entry barrier into the company's niche. But Musk was more specific on Friday night, when the company made its first deliveries of the new car.

He spent the next 30 minutes discussing his vision for Tesla over the next year and beyond.

Though the Model 3 has been touted as the first ''mass-market'' electric car, that's a little hyperbolic - it will start at $35,000, but buyers will want some of the bells and whistles, and a fully equipped car would cost about $60,000.

The Model 3 will reach 0 to 60 mph in 5.6 seconds and have a top speed of 130 miles per hour. The car has a range of 220 to 310 miles and has been designed to ''have the highest safety ratings in every category,'' the company said.

The vehicle, which seats five, is available in six colours, including two shades of silver, blue, white, red and black. Colours other than black will cost buyers additional $1,000. A long-range battery that allows for up to 310 miles of travel on a single charge and a top speed of 140 mph will cost an extra $9,000. Tesla said the Model 3's standard battery provides a 220-mile range.

The Model 3 is equipped with eight cameras, forward radar and twelve ultrasonic sensors that assist the vehicle in avoiding collisions and performing automatic emergency braking.

The vehicle has the ability to support Enhanced Autopilot, which is Tesla's second-generation Autopilot system.

For $5,000, Enhanced Autopilot gives the vehicle the ability to match its speed to traffic conditions, automatically change lanes, transition between freeways and self-park. For another $3,000, the Model 3 will be ready for ''full self-driving capability'', an option that will become available in the future and makes the car ''capable of conducting trips with no action required by the person in the driver's seat,'' the company said.

Model 3 designers eliminated knobs and controls from the car's dashboard, allowing the driver to control much of the car from a 15-inch touchscreen display to the right of the driver. That display includes GPS mapping and the speedometer.

'Road to hell'
Demand won't be an issue - reservations for the car now exceed 500,000, according to the Tesla CEO. The herculean undertaking ahead will be to produce the vehicle at a scale the automaker has come nowhere close to achieving to date.

''Frankly, we're going to be in production hell,'' Musk told the crowd of hundreds of Tesla employees at Fremont. ''That's going to be where we are for at least six months, maybe longer.''

The Model 3 will be built with 10,000 unique parts, and its production rate will be dependent on both a global network of components suppliers and Tesla's own battery gigafactory keeping up the pace.

''Almost anything that goes wrong anywhere in the world, if we haven't buffered the supply chain, will interrupt the production progress,'' Musk said. ''Any one of them can slow down the process.''

Tesla's CEO nonetheless is standing by Model 3 production plans, including making 20,000 a month in December. After that, Tesla's planned manufacturing ramp up will be even more dramatic. Musk wants to make 500,000 cars in 2018, then a million in 2020.

Musk has kept investors enamoured despite manufacturing hiccups that have regularly bedevilled Tesla. The production shortfall of new, bigger battery packs that the company cited when reporting underwhelming sales figures earlier this month was just the latest example.

Tesla produced just about 84,000 vehicles last year.

But the progress Musk has made thus far in executing his vision has catapulted his company's market capitalisation past carmakers that have been around more than a century, including Ford Motor Co and General Motors Co.