Tesla unveiled the five-seater car – its lowest-cost vehicle to date – on March 31.
Elon Musk tweeted the total reflected the orders received by the end of April 2.
Pre-orders of the Model 3 will not necessarily all translate into actual sales when the car is released, with first deliveries in late 2017.
Potential car owners need to put down $1,000 deposits to reserve their vehicles.
Such has been the interest that Elon Musk tweeted the company was “definitely going to need to rethink production planning”.
Elon Musk has said his goal is to produce about 500,000 vehicles a year once production is at full capacity.
The basic model will start at $35,000 and have a range of at least 215 miles per charge.
Tesla delivered 50,580 vehicles in 2015. Most of those were its Model S saloon, which overtook Nissan’s Leaf to become the world’s best selling pure-electric vehicle.
However, Tesla still posted a net loss of $889 million for 2015, partly because it spent $718 million on research and development over the period.
It left Tesla with cash reserves of $1.2 billion, down from $1.9 billion a year earlier.
Tesla is facing competition from other electric cars with a similar price and range that will become available first, including General Motors’ Chevy Bolt and BYD’s Qin EV300.
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