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Tesla Model 3 Comes Into Focus: Models, Motors, Manufacturing

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More details about Tesla Motors Model 3 have emerged over the past two weeks, bringing the future "affordable" Tesla into better focus.

Some of the facts that we already know about the mass-market all-electric include: The Model 3 is expected to be priced at $35,000 before incentives -- about half of the price of the current entry-level Model S -- and offer a 200-mile range, though longer-range versions may also be offered.  While styling is pretty much unknown, CEO Elon Musk has made elliptical statements about design. For example, during Tesla's fourth quarter 2014 earnings conference call in February he said:  "We got quite adventurous with the [Model] X...that would be too risky given the Gigafactory and everything sort of has to happen on time. We’re not going to go super crazy with the design of the initial version of the 3."

Some of the newer news includes:

Crossover and sedan: the Model 3 will include a crossover, according to a report this past week.  J.B.Straubel, the electric car company's CTO, announced the addition of a crossover to the Model 3 portfolio at the EIA Energy Conference in Washington DC.  This news comes as Tesla begins to roll out the Model X, its first crossover, in approximately three to four months.

Motor option: During the company's annual stockholders meeting on June 9, CEO Elon Musk, in response to a query, said the Model 3 will have a dual motor option. "I think for the Model 3, the standard, the base version of Model 3 would be single motor...you still have very good traction control...But I think in order to keep the car as affordable as possible, the standard version of the car would have a single motor but we would offer a dual motor as an option," he said. Note that Tesla began delivering the dual-motor "D" versions of the Model S earlier this year.   Tesla states on its site that with front and rear motors, the Model S "digitally and independently controls torque to the front and rear wheels" compared to "conventional all-wheel drive cars [that] employ complex mechanical linkages to distribute power from a single engine to all four wheels."

Model 3 manufacturing: In discussing a new paint center at the June 9 shareholders meeting, Musk touched on Model 3 production.  "We also have a new paint center...And the new paint center is actually set up to be able to do 10,000 cars a week. So, this paint center is intended to be able to match the production level that includes the Model 3, so we can produce...we can paint all of the cars at basically 500,000 unit per year level with this paint shop."

And the company, earlier this month, snapped up the 500,000-square-foot building where Solyndra once made solar cells in Fremont, Calif., which a Tesla spokeswoman said "gives us the space to expand our manufacturing."  This is in addition to the battery Gigafactory being constructed in Nevada.  Musk has said in the past that the one of the primary motivating forces behind the construction of the Gigafactory is the high-volume-production Model 3.

Model 3 range: While still somewhat speculative, longer-range versions of the Model 3 may emerge.  For example, using a battery-pack equivalent to what's currently in the Model S, a smaller Model 3 (let's say, 80 percent the size of the Model S) could theoretically offer a 300-mile range.