The long-awaited and highly anticipated Tesla Model 3 was finally unveiled to a ravenous audience on March 31.

Over 180,000 people placed a preorder within a 24-hour period to reserve their Model 3 for when it eventually goes to production. To put that into perspective, if most of those people do end up going through with their purchase, Tesla just sold $7.5 billion worth of cars in one day.

The industry is in a frenzy over this car, and with a few exceptions, I think they have every reason to be. There are two big questions when it comes to electric cars these days. One, what is the range of miles I can go on a charge? And two, how empty will my wallet be after I buy it? Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, answered those questions in a big way in the Model 3’s announcement.

Musk claims that the base car will have a range of at least 215 miles on a full charge, with the possibility of that number increasing before the final release. That puts the Model 3 at the top of its class when it comes to the range of an electric vehicle as it stands right now. Chevrolet’s Volt is the only car that challenges it with a range of 200 miles.

Pricing for the Model 3 is what really sets it apart from the herd. Tesla is saying that the base car won’t cost anything more than $35,000. As far as electric cars go, that’s downright cheap. Coming with the car out of the box is Tesla’s suite of Autopilot and safety systems developed for its bigger brother, the Model S.

I don’t think speed and performance will be a concern to Model 3 owners either, since the entry-level model will scoot you to 60 mph in under six seconds. Tesla has smartly carried over the same battery layout as the Model S, and placed the lithium-ion battery packs on the floor under the seats to maintain a low center of gravity and free up cargo space. Not only will the car handle well because of it, but you get two cargo areas; one traditional trunk, and then one in the front where you’d typically find a gas engine.

The Model 3 looks like it will certainly deliver on the specs sheet, but there’s a few areas where I find faults. For one, the car is an absolute treat to the eye until you see the front. Tesla thought they’d be clever here and delete the grill in favor of wraparound bodywork. Unfortunately, it comes out looking gimmicky, and dare I say duckbill-like in shape. Thankfully, the rest of the car is an elegant teardrop design, which takes definite styling cues from the Model S.

Per the current government incentives for electric vehicles, American buyers would receive a $7,500 rebate upon purchase, bringing the selling price all the way down to a manageable $27,500. This might be the case for a lot of early buyers, but after Tesla sells over 200,000 cars in the U.S., that rebate goes away. Tesla is predicting that it will sell 500,000 units a year once this car gets released, so those once beneficial incentives won’t mean anything for the consumer here shortly.

Musk has said he is “fairly confident” the Model 3 will be available to consumers by late 2017. Tesla has had a history of declaring a date for the release of a car, then missing it by wild amounts of time. The recently released Model X SUV was originally slated to be available to the public early 2014. That was postponed to late 2014, and then again to the second quarter of 2015 and then finally one more time to later that year. After that incredibly long wait, Tesla began to deliver Model Xs in September of 2015.

It wouldn’t be unusual for the same thing to happen with the Model 3, due to the necessity of getting everything right the first time around. Tesla could afford to have some slight bugs and problems with the Model S and X, since so few of them were sold. However, the economic consequences of a widespread recall for a critical problem on the Model 3 could be crippling for a company like Tesla.

Is the world ready for an electric car like this to be its daily driver? Pay close attention, because this car will either be the springboard to global success, or death of Elon Musk’s Tesla Motors.

Zac Palmer is a sophomore magazine journalism major. His column appears weekly in Pulp. He can be reached at zipalmer@syr.edu.

Published on April 3, 2016 at 10:30 pm