July 9 at 5:26 PM
The public is getting its first look at Tesla’s completed Model 3, more than a year after the electric car was announced by chief executive Elon Musk.
On Sunday, Musk tweeted a couple of photos showing off the Model 3, a battery-powered vehicle priced for mainstream Tesla consumers.
The images bear a strong resemblance to the car Musk revealed in 2016. Although Musk said the first car would have gone to Ira Ehrenpreis, a venture capitalist who founded DBL Partners, Ehrenpreis “gave those rights to me as a 46th birthday present,” Musk said on Twitter.
The highly anticipated vehicle is expected to be delivered to the first 30 people on Tesla’s massive wait list later this month.
With more than 370,000 pending reservations for a Model 3 — according to Tesla’s latest public figures — the company has its work cut out for it.
Analysts think the car could help the spread of pure-electric vehicles in the United States, but only if the company keeps its factory running at top speed. Tesla has had production issues that have led to concerns about its ability to meet demand.
Musk has predicted that by December, Tesla will be finishing Model 3s at a rate of 20,000 per month.
Despite Tesla’s efforts to market a battery that can power a car for more than 300 miles, the company told investors last week that it had trouble producing enough of them for its Model S and Model X vehicles in the second quarter. That issue, which the company said was eventually resolved, led to production and delivery delays.
That prompted analysts again to question Tesla’s ability to churn out enough Model 3s on time. Tesla’s stock fell by double-digits last week — as much as 16 percent. The shock to Tesla’s share price made it no longer the highest-valued carmaker in America, an honor it has held for the past several months.