Electric car maker Tesla’s founder and Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk on Monday said they will start selling its highly anticipated Model 3 car in the United States on Friday. On Twitter, Musk said the highly talked about automobile had passed all the regulatory requirements for production two weeks ahead of schedule.


“Expecting to complete SN1 [Serial Number 1] on Friday,” Musk posted. The Model 3 sedan, which is priced at $35,000 (approximately Rs 22 lakh), is scheduled to be released in India by the end of 2017 or early 2018. Musk said the firm will host a handover party for its first 30 customers on July 28. “Production grows exponentially,” Musk posted, adding that the firm will try to manufacture 100 cars by August and more than 1,500 by September.

Advertisement

The firm has said that the five-seater will be able to travel up to 133 kilometers on a single charge with the capacity to accelerate from zero to 60 miles per hour in under six seconds.

The manufacturer has had a history of being unable to put its products on the market on schedule, AP reported. Its last automobile, the Model X SUV, came out 18 months after its planned release. While the company has not disclosed how many customers have placed deposits on its latest car, it said it planned on making around 10,000 cars per week in 2018, AP reported.

Servicing the automobiles will also be a challenge for the firm, which is inexperienced in mass production, the news agency reported. The report said owners of the Model S and Model X cars were concerned about having to share company-owned charging facilities with new car owners.

On May 22, Musk had hinted at a possible delay in in the Silicon Valley firm’s entry into India. “Maybe I am misinformed, but I was told that 30% of parts must be locally sourced and the supply does not yet exist in India to support that,” Musk had posted on Twitter.