Tesla’s Model 3 Is Already Shattering Expectations - by Joe Romm

[I]t’s clear Tesla has pulled off an Apple-style product launch with the remarkable pre-sales success of Tesla’s Model 3 electric car.

Demand for the Model 3 was so great that Tesla’s $1000 pre-sales downpayment brought the company $276 million in its first weekend.  That’s bigger than the mere $248 million in sales brought in by Star Wars:  The Force Awakens in its opening weekend!

The staggering pre-sales of the Tesla Model 3 electric car seems to have caught everyone by surprise, including CEO Elon Musk, who arguably should have asked for more than $1000 down — especially since that money is refundable until Tesla starts building your car.

“Tesla’s Model 3 Preorder Numbers Are Way Bigger Than Anyone Expected,” explained Gizmodo, noting that one “survey said that conventional wisdom was on 55,000 pre-orders in the first 72 hours.”  It was 276,000 — and Bloomberg reports that, ultimately, “reservations might exceed 500,000.”

Certainly those are amazing numbers for any car, let alone one that you can’t test drive, won’t be available for over a year, and is made by a start-up company that hasn’t even built 100,000 total vehicles yet.  That’s clear from this chart of annual sales of the world’s top-selling cars:
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So it is entirely possible that 2015 U.S. demand growth for EVs stalled in part because lots of people decided to put off their EV purchase until the Model 3 or Bolt were available — something that happens to sales at Apple and many other companies who announce a next-generation killer product.

Either way, the EV naysayers were wrong, and the electric vehicle revolution has finally begun in earnest. And this is a more evidence that oil demand will may well peak by 2030.

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