Austin, Texas-based electric automaker Tesla (TSLA) has finally put the new 2024 Model 3 Highland refresh on sale in the United States and Canada.
Tesla updated its online car configurator very early in the morning today to replace the legacy Model 3 with the new design-refreshed model.
In our previous article from Sunday on the topic, we posted that Tesla updated the color palette for the Model Y with Stealth Grey and Ultra Red. The automaker did not offer these new colors for the Model 3 — hinting at the close launch of the Highland Model 3. However, it happened sooner than we expected.
| Model 3 RWD | Model 3 Long Range AWD | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $38,990 | $45,990 |
| Range | 272 miles | 341 miles |
| Top Speed | 125 mph | 125 mph |
| Acceleration (0-60 mph) | 5.8sec | 4.2sec |
Interestingly, Tesla did not change the prices and range for the new Model 3, they remain the same as the previous legacy model. The new Tesla Model 3 RWD base variant starts at $38,990 and the Long Range AWD version is priced at $45,990.
Like the rest of the world, Tesla isn’t offering the higher-end Performance variant of the new Model 3 Highland in the North American region as well.
Tesla has kept the specifications of the Model 3 Highland the same as other regions where it’s available. The automaker has even offered the same wheels (18″ Photon and 19″ Nova) as China, Europe, and the Middle East.
Tesla’s Fremont car factory was recently seen swarmed with the new Model 3 Highland cars with Chinese badges. Not just the factory, but they were also sighted across California for testing purposes. This created the speculation that pre-production had begun at the factory.
However, there were no solid reports of Tesla upgrading its assembly line at the Fremont factory recently. The automaker successfully held the Model 3 Highland production line upgrades a secret. However, one Reddit comment I read earlier has proven to be correct with today’s launch, u/LloydsZ wrote:
My friend works at the Fremont factory and said they built the last model 3 the night of December 29. And they will start building the new model 3 within the next coming weeks
Some information about the Tesla Model 3 Ludicrous (performance version) was leaked via the car’s online parts catalog last year. But Tesla removed it and any traces as soon as the news went viral.
As we can see in the Tesla Model 3 online studio screenshot above, the estimated delivery date is mentioned January to February 2024. This means Tesla has scaled up the new Model 3 production enough to meet the expected demand.
Tesla also does not mention any information about the federal tax credit for the newly-launched Model 3 Highland in the car configurator. Last month, the automaker encouraged buying a Model 3 before 31st December 2023 to gain the full tax credit of $7,500 and it would phase out entirely at the start of 2024.
Even with all the success in 2023 with a record number of vehicle deliveries globally, Tesla’s share price is still struggling on the stock market. According to some analysts, investors are counting on Elon Musk’s talk during the upcoming Q4 2023 earnings call to further gauge their decisions regarding Tesla’s (TSLA) investments.
Tesla investor and analyst Gary Black wrote on X (Twitter):
Tesla struggling the past few days as investors worry about the 4Q conf call on 1/24. #1 question: Will Elon be his usual gloom-and-doom self on the call and blame the economy for 2024 TSLA estimates coming down? Or will he put his $TSLA CEO hat on and share his vision of the product plan, pricing environment, and road to 10M vehicles/year? Updates on Optimus progress would be a plus.
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