Electric cars are great and all, but most of them suffer from short ranges and long charging time or a high price tag. Well, Tesla’s $35,000 Model 3 is going to change all of that with a car that offers the long travel ranges Tesla is known for without their equally high prices. If $35,000 is still a little outside of your budget, don’t forget that Tesla Supercharger stations will charge your car for free.
While Tesla cars already boast a 200-mile range that’s roughly double that of other electromobiles like the Nissan Leaf, their current models are $100,000 and $70,000—not exactly your every day sedan. Still, they’ve already set up a network of their 20-minute Supercharger stations that can already, with some careful planning, allow coast to coast roadtrips in Tesla vehicles.
Lowering the entry cost for the average person to get an electric car should, in theory, lead to an even wider spread of the charging stations as more people get behind the wheel. Then that will lead to more people buying the cars, which will then lead to—you get the idea. It’s like a vicious cycle of glorious, environment-saving technology.
It’s probably a good idea, too, since Tesla Motors’s patents recently went open source, so they won’t be the only ones producing cheap electric vehicles based on their technology in the coming years. The Model 3 will set the bar for what a low-cost, high-performance electric car should be, and that healthy competition will benefit everyone as the number of affordable vehicles using the same electric infrastructure grows.
(via Gizmodo, image via Tesla Motors)
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