Tesla’s entry-level saloon starts at a whisker under £40,000

UK order books are open for the Tesla Model 3, and we finally have a price: £38,900 for the rear-wheel drive Standard Range Plus (SRP) model, inclusive of the government’s £3,500 plug-in car grant. Deliveries start in June.

Maybe not as cheap as we were initially led to believe (Tesla promised prices would start at $35,000, which in today’s money is £26,600), but not bad. For a bit of context, £38,900 is around £3,000 more than a top-spec Nissan Leaf, and about the same as a 2.0-litre petrol BMW 330i.

The SRP Model 3 manages 0-60mph in 5.3 seconds, will hit 140mph and claims 258 miles of range. Next up is the Long Range model, which gets dual motors for all-wheel drive. It takes 4.5 seconds to hit 60mph, has a top speed of 145mph and costs £47,900. Finally there’s the Performance. Also dual-motor, it does 0-60mph in 3.2 seconds and tops out at 162mph. It will cost from £56,900, and has a claimed range of 329 miles.

Read more: Top Gear

The Tesla Model 3 is the first affordable, mass-produced model in the American manufacturer’s all-electric range, offering customers something very different from conventional rivals such as the BMW 3 Series, Audi A4, Jaguar XE and Alfa Romeo Giulia.

The Model 3 has no direct electric rivals for now; it’s more expensive than EVs like the Nissan Leaf and Hyundai Kona Electric but smaller and cheaper than the Jaguar I-Pace. It’s closer to the Jaguar in nature, however, thanks to its minimalist but luxurious high-tech interior, massive desirability and incredible performance.

The newest Tesla is a clear evolution from the design of the Model S but with extra emphasis on the amount of interior space that can be gained owing to the absence of a conventional combustion engine. This has resulted in a bonnet that is much shorter and a rear window that stretches almost to the tail, maximising room for passengers and their luggage. There are myriad clever features, from the key that’s actually your smartphone to a single-slot air-vent that can somehow adjust airflow and direction as if by magic.

Three versions are available initially, starting with the rear-wheel drive Standard Range Plus that’s capable of 258 miles from a full charge and 0-60mph in 5.3 seconds. Long Range AWD and Performance versions gain an extra motor and four-wheel drive, giving the Performance almost supernatural acceleration – 0-60mph takes 3.2 seconds. These more expensive versions have 348 and 329 miles of range respectively.

The Model 3 Long Range AWD feels addictively fast and relaxing, thanks to near-silence from its electric motors. The car’s handling belies its weight, with excellent grip and good resistance to body roll, and the suspension is comfortable enough to allay our fears the Model 3 would feel too stiff on British roads.

Read more: Car Buyer

Tesla’s Model 3 stormed to the top of the Western Europe battery electric car sales charts in the first quarter of 2019, outselling the second best Renault Zoe with almost twice as many sales.

This is all the more remarkable because the Model 3 was only available for sale from February, and the price of the Tesla is probably more than twice and maybe occasionally even 3 times that of the little Zoe city car.

According to data compiled by Berlin-base automotive industry analyst Matthias Schmidt www.schmidtmatthias.de, Tesla sold 19,482 Model 3s in the first quarter compared with the second placed Zoe’s 11,049 and the Nissan Leaf with 10,315.

Direct competitors to the Model 3 were way off the pace, with the Jaguar I-Pace in 7th place at 3,012 and the Audi E-Tron 11th with 2,526, according to Schmidt’s data.

Schmidt said the European competition may in fact be holding back its sales because next year, European Union (EU) carbon dioxide (CO2) regulations tighten sharply. Manufacturers may want to have the biggest number of electric cars in their fleets in 2021, to bring down the average emissions, and mitigate or avoid big fines. Meanwhile, the Tesla Model 3 has the chance to rack up big sales because its all electric fleet won’t suffer fines.

Read more: Forbes

A few weeks after its arrival on the old continent, the Tesla Model 3 is already becoming the best-selling electric car in several European markets.

It has now been a month since Tesla officially started Model 3 deliveries in Europe and the automaker has already delivery thousands of units in Several markets.

In Norway, Tesla delivered hundreds of Model 3 vehicles last month, but March is proving to be the month during which the Model 3 is taking over the automotive market in the country.

In the first week of March, over a thousand new Model 3 vehicles were registered in Norway — three times more than any other car.

Considering that there’s another shipment of over one thousand Model 3’s expected in Norway any day now, the new electric vehicle is going to become the best-selling car in the country by a wide margin.

In Germany, which is a market where Tesla had difficulties in the past, the automaker delivered almost 1,000 Model 3 cars last month — increasing its sales by over 500% in the market.

The Netherlands has also been an important market for Tesla and with 472 Model 3’s delivered last month, it was enough for the vehicle to become the best-selling EV in the country – beating other newcomers like the Kona EV and Niro EV as well as longtime bestsellers, like the Nissan Leaf.

Read more: Electrek

It was 6 weeks ago, early December 2018, that European reservation holders were asked to configure their Tesla Model 3’s.

The expectation was deliveries would begin somewhere in second half of the first quarter of 2019, but many were also doubtful of that timeline.

Last week, reservation holders received an invitation to experience the Model 3 at a local showroom. I was one of those reservation holders, and after years of reading and writing about the Model 3, after just sitting in it at the Paris Motor Show, we could not wait for the change to drive it.

A small number of Model 3 Performance cars for test driving were sent ahead of the first shipload of customer Model 3’s that will arrive in early February in Zeebrugge, Belgium. Those cars arriving soon are for those who did not wait and ordered their cars untested, as will be the case for the next 2 or 3 shiploads of cars. (And as many a Wall Street analyst can explain, selling thousands of the highest trim levels sight unseen is clear proof that there is no demand for the Model 3 in Europe, but that is for another article. </sarcasm mode>)

Let us state that it is not fair to have the Long Range Performance with the Premium Upgrade Package for a test drive when your budget would really like a Standard Range basic version. Now, there are serious questions. For example: Is the Standard Range with rear-wheel drive just as sticky to the road as the all-wheel drive? Is the cornering just as effortless as in this Performance model? Is the Performance chill mode comparable to the Standard Range normal mode?

Read more: Clean Technica