If you order a Tesla Model 3 right now, you’ll have to wait a bit longer to get behind the wheel. Although the company handed out its first 30 Model 3 cars at its unveiling Friday evening, the general public will not just be able to buy one and drive it out of the showroom.
In fact, if you reserve a Tesla Model 3 right now, you’ll have to wait till at least late next year to start driving it.
“If you order a Model 3 now, you’ll probably get it towards the end of next year,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk said during the company’s big Model 3 unveiling event on Friday night, outside of the Fremont factory that has been working long hours to pump out the company’s first affordable electric car. Still, no matter how fast the Fremont factory works, the wait time is gonna be a while.
That’s not entirely unexpected. “When you have 10,00 unique items in a vehicle, any one of them can slow down production,” he said Friday evening. “We’re building the cars as fast as we can.”
Nevertheless, Musk admitted that “the thing that’s going to be a major challenge for us over the next six to nine months is: how do we build a huge number of cars?”
He was pretty blunt about the enormous challenge the company had in store for the near future. “Frankly we’re going to be in production hell,” he said. “Welcome to production hell,” he told Tesla workers in the audience, to laughter.
“We’re going to do everything we possibly can to get you a car as soon possible”
As for his employees, Musk had a different message: “As the saying goes…if you’re going through hell, keep going.”
