Tesla boss Elon Musk has admitted he will have to rethink production capacity after the company took almost £7 billion of pre-orders for its “affordable” electric car in two days.
By the end of Monday, 276,000 pre-orders had been placed for the Model 3 worldwide. A day earlier orders had topped 115,000 in 24 hours.
It will cost at least $35,000 (£25,000) when it goes on sale in mid–2017, meaning the company has secured $9.7bn worth of sales for a car still over a year from production.
Musk tweeted when sales reached 200,000 that the company was “definitely going to need to rethink production planning”.
The company would not disclose how many UK orders had been taken.
The Model 3 will be the third car from Tesla. Musk said deliveries will begin at the end of next year.
The Model S, a luxury sedan, was launched in 2012, while the Model X, an SUV/people carrier crossover, was launched last year.
Tesla has yet to make a profit – something Musk insists will change in 2016, despite continuing huge investment into R&D. In 2015 it posted a net loss of $889 million (£620m).
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Video: Tesla unveils the Model 3
Jeremy has been a journalist for 30 years, 20 of which have been in business-to-business automotive. He was a writer and news editor on AM-sister brand Fleet News for three years before setting up the AM website. For the last five years he has been Bauer B2B’s head of digital helping to manage the digital assets of AM, together with Fleet News, Commercial Fleet, Rail and Smart Transport.
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