Australian Tesla Model 3 deliveries ‘on track’

The Tesla Model 3 remains on track to reach Australian roads “around mid 2019”, chief executive Elon Musk has confirmed overnight.

Responding to an Australian customer enquiry on Twitter, Musk

“I’ve noticed the delivery date on my Australian reservation has disappeared from the website. It was late 2019, any ideas on when model 3s will be available in Aus,” Australian Tesla enthusiast Martin Hungerford tweeted to the Tesla founder.

To which Elon Musk replied: “around mid 2019”.

That date will place Australian deliveries about three-and-a-half years after the original pre-order process commenced, and will coincide with right-hand drive deliveries in other markets including the UK.

“We didn’t give a firm delivery date for Australia. We gave a global production timeline and there’s plenty of data out there on where we were and where we’ve got to from a manufacturing point of view,” a Tesla Australian spokesman recently told carsales.

The unchanged arrival time comes in the face of considerable production setbacks for the Model 3 earlier this year. Tesla originally forecast it would build around 10,000 Model 3s a month by December 2017, when it made just over 2000.

Conversely, Model 3 production now outnumbers the combined outputs of the Model S and Model X, with a reported 113,000 vehicles built to-date.

Australian customers began putting $1500 deposits down for the Model 3 in March, 2016.

Original speculation pointed to a circa-$50,000 price tag in Australia. Musk Tweeted in July 2017 that Tesla will charge “$US price in $AUD plus import duties and sales tax”.

The Model 3 news comes as the Californian company turned a profit in the third quarter, posting net income of $US312 million ($AUD439.9). The result marks Tesla’s second profit in two years.