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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

This is good. It's Tesla focusing on making better cars. More range is good. Faster charging is good. Those are real things. Yesterday's claims about Tesla operating a million self-driving taxis by 2020 were, well, not taken too seriously.

The new stuff is all at the high end, though. The $35,000 Model 3 is still absent from the product line.

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It’s not absent, it’s just hidden. You can order one if you call.

For now.

> The $35,000 Model 3 is still absent from the product line.

I find it bad that they hyped it up for so long and then removed it from online sales a month later, but you can still order it over the phone or in-branch.

Plus despite some rumours of 2+ month delays, they are actively being produced and have already been delivered to some customers (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQgjY2SRrck).

2020 is in 8 months. They currently produce about 400k cars per year...

I believe the point was:

> self-driving taxis

Ok, but how do they get 1 million cars? Are they just going to buy VWs or something and kit them out with their self-driving tech? :)

Also note the new Gigafactory in China is going up at a lightning pace, and very likely will be churning out 10k Model 3's a week by the end of 2019.

So that factory alone will put ~ 500k Model 3's on the road by the end of 2020.

I certainly hope so. So far I'm not impressed with Tesla's manufacturing "prowess".

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