For the followers of Tesla Motors, you will notice that they currently have the Tesla Model S, the flagship model. For future releases, Tesla has a Model X SUV coming later this year. So for hawk eyed readers, their next model would have been the Model E.
Rather unfortunately however, Ford got a wind of this, and promptly denied Tesla from using the name Model E. In an interview with Autoweek, Elon Musk was quoted “We were going to call it model E for a while and then Ford sued us saying it wanted to use the Model E–I thought this is crazy, Ford’s trying to kill sex! So we’ll have to think of another name.”
Well, looks like Tesla has decided to use Model III (3) instead. “The new model is going to be called Model III, we’ll have three bars to represent it and it’ll be S III X!”, as Elon Musk said.
What we do know about the Model 3 is that it would be sold at approximately $35,000. With that price, it goes against the very popular and well established BMW 3 series. In comparison, the bigger Model S retails from $70,000 onward. Other than the BMW, the Model 3 is slated to also compete against the Mercedes Benz C class, Audi A4 and Lexus IS250. Range should not be an issue, as Elon Musk claims that the Model 3 can achieve well over 200 miles (321km) on a single charge.
