Tesla Model 3 Sales Order Tops $10 Billion Says Elon Musk

Tesla Motors boasted that orders for its recently launched Model 3 has reached 253,000 in just 36 hours. In monetary values, that would be equal to $10 Billion car sales in less than two days.

This car is living up to its name as Elon Musk's first mass-market vehicle. However, the first deliveries of the electric car will not start until 18 months or even more.

The car, as Elon Musk tweeted on Friday will sell at $42,000 including some options plus some additional features. Its base price was tagged at $35,000 prior to its debut last Thursday.

At $42,000, that would give Tesla Motors a retail sales value of around $10.6 billion just for the initial orders alone.

The intense public interest for the new electric vehicle, encouraged by the incessant tweets of Musk will help boost the value of Tesla's stocks, which closed on Friday at $237.59 up by around 3.4 percent. Since hitting its 12-month low in February, Tesla stock has skyrocketed over 60 percent.

After the car's launch on Thursday, Musk tweeted about 68 times, and talked about the car's several features, from its hubcap design to its instrument panel. He also tweeted about his plans to build high-speed supercharger networks all over Asia and Europe.

The car has a slightly oblong steering wheel and when someone asked him why he chose this design, Musk answered: "That's not the real steering system."

In another tweet, he mentioned that the final Model 3 may have a design that will be more like something from Space X, his space rocket company.

Musk's tweets after the launch repeatedly dwelt on speculations on whether the car may even be a completely self-driving car, considering that he did not say it has a steering wheel, but referred to it as having a steering system and steering controls.

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