The imminent launch of Tesla’s long-awaited Model 3 is taking on epic, Black Friday-like proportions. The reservation process will open up on the morning of March 31, several hours before the car makes its official debut, and die-hard Tesla fans are ready to spend a night or more outside of their local Tesla store in a bid to place one of the very first orders before even seeing the car.
Posting on the popular Tesla Motors Club forum, user Mad Hungarian reports the Tesla store in Montreal, Canada, expects that at least a hundred prospective owners will camp out in near-freezing temperatures overnight in order to be assigned an early reservation number. Many stores in the United States are expecting lines, too.
The Tesla Motors Club has created an online spreadsheet to keep track of where its members are going to reserve a Model 3. At the time of writing, it lists close to 230 entries from future owners scattered across no less than ten countries in North America and in Europe. Some are current Tesla owners who want to downsize from the Model S, while others have never owned an electric car before. A few are going as far as to bring tents, lawn chairs, snacks, and coffee to help pass the time.
The reservation process will open up in a week, but the first Model 3 deliveries aren’t scheduled to start until late 2017. The waiting list will evidently be long, so shoppers who wait a week or more to reserve a Model 3 might not get their car until 2018 at the earliest. Tesla will take orders online, too, but the digital reservation process won’t be opened until 8:30 pm PT on March 31, which is when the Model 3 will be unveiled at an event held in Los Angeles. By that point, it sounds like thousands of people will have already placed a $1,000 deposit for the 3, which is expected to start in the vicinity of $35,000 before incentives are factored in.
