Accelerating Sustainable Transport

The entry-level Tesla Model 3 sedan is coming this month, and it’s not just supposed to transform the future of the company, it’s supposed to transform the electric car into a bit player for the sybaritic and the techno-weirdos into a clean vehicle for the masses. Here’s everything we know.

And also some stuff we can only guess at. But first, the important things.

This story originally ran March 4 and is being republished today on the eve of the Model 3’s debut with some new information.

Range

The first two real Teslas (sorry, Tesla Roadster, but you were kind of a fat Lotus with batteries), the Model S and the Model X, have ranges between 220 and 300 miles, depending on options, weather, driving conditions, charge, battery condition, and other factors.

Update: A story in Electrek, citing unnamed sources, claims the Model 3 willhave a range of up to 300 miles on the 80 kWh battery pack. This is not confirmed yet.

But that’s really not a problem at all when you consider that most people don’t drive more than 300 miles every single day, and that Tesla’s Supercharger network, specifically set up for road trips, can re-charge you back up within about a half hour or so. Ignorant shit-talkers out there will howl all day about how bad all of that is, but we put more than 1500 miles on a Model S during a road trip, and believe us, the whole shebang works pretty well.