Tesla set to lead sales charge with £23,000 electric car

WHAT’S the magic number? Well, if you are Elon Musk, it is 35,000 — dollars, that is. The Silicon Valley entrepreneur and driving force behind Tesla, the electric car maker, sees that as the price tag — £23,000 — below which battery-powered cars will finally break into the mainstream.

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Musk has now given the clearest indication yet that he is aiming at that price for his much-anticipated Model 3. The car is slated to be Tesla’s first mass-market entry and is expected to transform the company from a niche operation into a profitable, high-volume manufacturer. Musk aims to hit sales of at least 500,000 vehicles annually by the decade’s end — about 10 times what he expects to sell this year.

The new Model 3 will be unveiled next March, possibly at the New York motor show. Unlike the Model S — a luxury car costing from £51,180 — the Model 3 will be a smaller runaround.

There is no hint as to what the Model 3 will look like, but Musk said it would be “way different from any other car on the road”.