What's the news?
When the lines started forming at Tesla dealerships around the world, we should have had an inkling. An inkling that the (admittedly very healthy) analyst predictions of around 100,000 Tesla Model 3 sales in the car's first year were going to be somewhat short of the mark. No-one has queued outside of a car dealer for a mid-size executive saloon since, well since ever and the Model 3 launch was fast becoming less of a normal motoring event and something more akin to the unveiling of a new Apple product or even a Star Wars sequel.
And then it really hit the ground running. The car was unveiled to the public in the early hours of last Friday morning, and by Saturday evening Tesla's boss, Elon Musk, reported on Twitter that the order bank had passed 276,000 cars and that number has now surpassed 300,000. A third of a million orders for a car that has so far only been glimpsed and which is not production ready yet. 100,000 more Model 3s ordered in 48hrs than Nissan Leafs have been sold since 2010. Some commentators are putting the total amount of cash that has just tumbled into Tesla's accounts (every order supposedly came with a USD$1,000 or GBP£1,000 deposit) at USD$500-million.
No wonder Tesla's oft-mercurial share price leapt up. It gained as much as ten per cent at one point, closing at USD$237 a share. Not bad for a car maker which has struggled to make a profit. Evercore ISI analyst George Galliers said, in a note to potential investors, that: "to us the vehicle is 'the game changer' and will likely play a critical role in Elon Musk's desire to expedite the auto industry's transition from internal combustion engine to electric."
Of course, many is the slip between launch cup and vehicular lip. Musk and Tesla now have a lot of work to do to get the car production and sales ready, and with that many orders, the biggest issue could well be factory space. The 'Gigafactory' in the Nevada desert, which is set to massively increase Tesla's battery-making capacity, is only just coming on line, while Model S and Model X production already has Tesla at capacity and then some - the company has only built around 100,000 cars in total so far. Even the recently-opened European Tesla factory in The Netherlands is essentially only putting together kits which come in, part-assembled, from the States, so there's some way to go before Tesla can start making all those Model 3s. If you have an Irish order in for one, I wouldn't be holding your breath - just getting through the initial batch of orders could carry Tesla through to 2020 as it is.
Meanwhile, development work has to be done. Tesla is already promising a 300km minimum one-charge range from the basic Model 3, but other versions have promised 500km ranges and that's going to be harder to package in a smaller car than the Model S or Model X. And while the Supercharger network of charging points is expanding fast in the US market, it's still nascent in Europe and simply not available yet in Ireland.
Meanwhile, the minimalist interior shown in the Model 3 on stage last week is fast becoming not the real-deal. Musk has been responding to criticisms of the steering wheel design by saying that "that's not the real steering system" and "It will make sense after part 2 of the Model 3 unveil" while some have pointed out that the large, free-floating central screen could well fall foul of passenger safety regulations in the US. The Model 3 then, in spite of its early stratospheric success, is far from being the finished item.