Tesla Motors core focus moves to the Tesla Model 3

Tesla Founder and CTO J.B. Straubel gave a fascinating presentation a few days ago at the University of Nevada, Reno in which he described the forthcoming Tesla Model 3 as a "core focus" within Tesla Motors. The Tesla Model 3 is Tesla Motors' next vehicle with a projected 200+ miles of all-electric vehicle range and a $35,000 price point. Straubel was emphatic that the Tesla Model 3 would showcase a "whole new platform" which will differ greatly from the Tesla Model S and Tesla Model X. 

Image: Lake Tahoe News

Tesla CTO J.B. Straubel openly discussed the much-anticipated Tesla Model 3, "Our mission is to build affordable cars... the vehicle we are actually developing today - most of the people inside Tesla are no longer working on the S or X, but they are hard at work designing and inventing all the technologies going into the Model 3... for better or worst, most of Model 3 has to be new. [Regarding the] X, we were able to build with a lot of common components with S, but with the Model 3 we can’t do that. We are inventing a whole new platform... it’s a new battery architecture. It’s a new motor technology; a brand new vehicle structure. It’s a lot of work. It’s a thing we started on a few years ago. As I mention, it’s kind of the core focus inside the company now looking at R&D and engineering investment.”

Check out J.B Straubel delivering his presentation below...

Source: University of Nevada, Reno

We encourage you to watch the the whole video. But, courtesy of TeslaMondo*, some of the best highlights came towards the end of the talk during the Q&A session:

25:19 — Europe outselling North America.
26:50 — Model III now the engineering focus.
101:40 — Gigafactory will burn zero carbon fuels. Doesn’t even have a “just in case” natural gas line.
104:18 — EVs [electric vehicles] have inherent advantage in autonomy because they’re entirely drive-by-wire.
104:90 — We’re about a decade away from a 90-percent autonomous car 

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*Source: TeslaMondo