Originally published on CleanTechnica.
Elon Musk has taken to Twitter again to thrill and dazzle us. A couple of days ago, he tweeted that “Tesla is increasing the production ramp as fast as possible, but I’d recommend ordering a Model 3 soon if you want 2018 delivery.” This is a reiteration of something he said on the quarterly financials call with investors.
But early this morning, @LifeOfRockstar tried to get some more details, tweeting, “ya think those of us who ordered pre reveal will see it late 2017?”
Elon replied in his concise, hopeful-yet-cautious way: “I think so.”
Gotta love that.
That’s >100,000 affordable, long-range electric cars … in 2017.
Well, we think. The thing is, the way production will be prioritized is locations close to the factories first — USA, and especially California. That helps with working out any bugs that might crop up in production. But that also makes it unclear if Elon’s response was just regarding US reservations or all reservations across the globe. @ElecVehicleGuy tweeted for confirmation, but there’s no response to that one yet.
Naturally, someone (@jason_zadroga) asked about what many of us have been waiting to hear: What’s the reservation count now? Is it over 500,000? Again, we have no response at this point in time. Maybe Musk is busy getting his ~6 hrs of sleep.
Below are the core tweets and the full financials conference call (yes, updated) if you want more details. Of course, if you want even more details, you can try tweeting Elon. It’s a bit of a mystery how his approach to Twitter is, though. Far more people tweet questions (and comments) than get responses, but he doesn’t just respond to well known people with large numbers of Twitter followers. In fact, he often responds to people with a tiny number of followers. It seems highly unlikely that he goes through most of the tweets sent his way, but maybe he has someone doing so for him and highlighting the ones that seem worth a response. It seems more like a natural flow than that, but I’m not sure. (If you have insight on this, feel free to drop us a line.)
Tesla is increasing the production ramp as fast as possible, but I'd recommend ordering a Model 3 soon if you want 2018 delivery
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 5, 2016
@LifeOfRockstar I think so
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 7, 2016
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