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The news everyone had been waiting for all weekend was finally released via an Elon Musk tweet tonight. He stated the following: “Model 3 passed all regulatory requirements for production two weeks ahead of schedule. Expecting to complete SN1 on Friday”

I am assuming SN1 means “Serial Number 1” which would be the first production model off the assembly line! The Model 3 is coming a little bit quicker than we all expected and it seems that Tesla has pulled it off!

He then tweeted a few minutes later: “Handover party for first 30 customer Model 3’s on the 28th! Production grows exponentially, so Aug should be 100 cars and Sept above 1500.” And then a few more minutes later: “Looks like we can reach 20,000 Model 3 cars per month in Dec”

Can’t wait to get mine! Of course, even with my reservation being day one, and within the first 30-40 minutes of in-store reservations, I am assuming I am well beyond the initial runs he tweeted about due to the fact that I am on the east coast. I’m not expecting mine until much later in the year and perhaps even next Spring (if I wait for AWD).

After seeing the pictures that Reddit user YouYouXue posted, we can gather some useful data from one of the pictures.

The picture of the touchscreen dash very clearly shows the supercharger charging rate, how many miles of charge are in the battery currently, and how many minutes remain to fill up the battery fully. Doing some simple math, it turns out that the max charge seems to be about 235 miles per a full charge! Not too bad!

However, the supercharger charging rate seems to be pretty slow, at only 169 miles of charge per hour. That means for a full 0 to 235 mile charge cycle, a supercharger would take about 83 minutes! Some people are saying that is ok because this number fluctuates from one charger to the next, but that should not be the case with Tesla superchargers.

All of the interior pictures that we have seen so far seem to be leather, but there is a growing concern among many I have spoken with that leather is not likely going to come standard. If there aren’t any options at launch, that means the majority of buyers will be forced to go with cloth seats, which is a major deterrent to many. Which means that the first set of cars produced this year prior to any options being available will likely not be the $35,000 base Model 3, but instead, a slightly higher priced Model 3 with leather seats.

What do you think?

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