Update 22:30 PST: Preorders broke the 150,000 barrier, according to Tesla’s own tracker at the launch event.
Elon Musk just unveiled Tesla’s Model 3, the car designed to bring Tesla to the masses.
The car will start at $35,000, compared to the Model S and X which can easily run close to $100,000.
On stage, Elon said that 115,000 people had already preordered before the car had even been unveiled. This means the electric car company just took in $115M in deposits, and four billion dollars in potential sales.
While not all of these pre-order will convert to sales, it’s still a staggering number for a car company that barely produced 50,000 cars throughout all of last year.
Tesla began taking preorders in stores this afternoon, and many stores had lines wrapping around the block.
Longest line EVER #Model3https://t.co/EafMhK3BDC
— Tesla (@Tesla) March 31, 2016
And, online preorders, which were supposed to open as the car was unveiled, was moved up an hour to 7:30pm PT to prevent the servers from overloading due to live stream viewers and pre-orderers both hitting the site at the same time.
Online ordering at https://t.co/46TXqRrsdr will now open at 7:30pm Pacific to ensure no server overload. Presentation still at 8:30.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 31, 2016
Post updated with new information