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Not more than 13 hours after Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the company’s first mass-market vehicle, the Model 3, Musk announced that the company has received 180,000 orders — and a couple of hours later, tweeted that 18,000 more orders had quickly followed.
At the time of the reveal, that number was at 115,000 — already a substantial feat for a car that nobody had yet seen — but with 83,000 additional orders since last night’s event, Tesla is quickly nearing the 200,000 mark.
According to Musk, though the Model 3 starts at $35,000 without any additional bells and whistles, the cars will probably sell for an average of $42,000 each. At that price point, Tesla is expected to bring in approximately $8.3 billion after it sells 198,000 cars.
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But, the company still has to make good on its promise to begin production on and deliver the vehicle by the end of next year. At the event last night, Musk said he was confident the company would be able to stick to the deadline.
Musk restated his goal of producing 500,000 cars by 2020 last night and said it was going to be “doable” but that it also requires the company’s battery factory in Nevada, the Gigafactory, to produce more lithium batteries than currently are available in the world.
Though Musk credited those who bought Tesla’s luxury sedan and SUV, the Model S and X, with helping to cover the costs of the production of the Model 3, it’s still not entirely clear how much the production of the vehicles cost and whether current sales will be able to cover that cost.
But one thing is for certain, people are excited about the Model 3.
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/715934657720639488
https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/715952781895426048
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.