Model 3: Elon Musk Unveils First Photos of Tesla’s Latest Car

Elon Musk has shared the first images of Tesla’s Model 3 after it came off the assembly line.

The electric car company’s co-founder and chief executive tweeted a picture captioned “First Production Model 3” on July 8.

Elon Musk followed it up with another Model 3 photo, this time in color, outside the Tesla factory site in California.

The Model 3 is Tesla’s first mass-market car and the first 30 owners will get in the driver’s seat on July 28.

Model 3: Tesla Unveils Its Lowest-Cost Vehicle to Date

The four-door Model 3 will then be available to the public, with a base price of $35,000, almost half that of the Tesla’s next-cheapest model.

Tesla’s share price more than doubled between December and late June as investors backed Elon Musk’s strategy to transform the low-volume luxury electric car maker into a producer for the crowded mass-market, but has since fallen back.

Elon Musk: Tesla Model 3 Pre-Orders Total 276,000

Registrations for new Tesla cars in California, its largest market, were down 24% in April compared with April 2016, according to IHS Markit data. Tesla responded by calling the figure “cherry-picked” data.

Tesla reported that first-half 2017 global deliveries for all its models rose to 47,100. That was at the lower end of its predicted sales range of 47,000 to 50,000.

In its last full financial year results, Tesla made a loss of $889 million.

Elon Musk’s tweeted images follow news last week that Volvo would become the first traditional vehicle manufacturer to phase out the petrol and diesel powered combustion engine, in a move toward hybrid and electric car production.