Tesla Model 3: Elon Musk Tweets First Pictures Of New Vehicle

Tesla Inc.’s co-founder and chief executive Elon Musk followed up his Twitter hype for the company’s new Model 3 by posting the first images of the vehicle as it came off the assembly line.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted out Saturday, “First Production Model 3,” for Tesla’s first full-production version of the vehicle. The Model 3 has an ultimate production volume goal of 500,000 units for 2018, which is a large increase from the 85,000 cars Tesla sold in 2016. However the Model 3 is a simpler design in comparison to the Model S and Model X vehicles.

The first 30 owners – other than Musk himself – will receive the Model 3 on July 28, Musk announced earlier this month. The first of the new cars was initially set to be received by Ira Ehrenpreis, an investor and Tesla board member who placed the first deposit back in April. However, Ehrenpreis gave the car to Elon as a gift (reportedly for the CEO's 46th birthday) and so the very first Model 3 will go to Musk himself. Ehrenpreis will now receive the number two vehicle instead. The base price of the Model 3 is $35,000 ( £27,100), which is nearly half of the price of Tesla’s next-cheapest publicly available model headed to the market.

Auto industry experts say they expect Tesla to ultimately offer pricer options including all-wheel drive and bigger battery packs for maximized performance.

In its last full financial year, the company took a loss of $889 million. When Musk initially announced the July 28 release of the Model 3 the company's stock price jumped 2 percent. But this week, the company took a set of losses that placed it behind General Motors as the second most valuable U.S. aut company.

Fortune lists the company valued at about $50.7 billion, slightly below General Motors' $52.6 billion market cap.