Surprise! The Tesla Model 3 is selling fast, as 180,000 buyers put down deposits in the first 24 hours.
CEO Elon Musk tweeted Friday that the average selling price of the cars purchased was $42,000, which means the company logged about $7.5 billion in sales in a single day.
Most buyers didn’t even wait to see Musk unveil the Model 3, the company’s first mass market car, Thursday night in California. By the time he took the stage at 8:30 p.m. PT, there were already 115,000 orders.
“Future of electric cars looking bright!” Musk tweeted.
Before the Tesla event, buyers had to go to a Tesla store to reserve a Model 3, which has a base price of $35,000 but can be loaded up with lots of options. Buyers could start placing their orders online an hour before the unveiling.
But they’ll have to wait until the end of next year, if not 2018 to take delivery of their new cars.
A tweet from Musk later on Friday indicated that even Tesla didn’t expect to take quite so many orders.
It was an impressive launch, Morgan Stanley auto analyst Adam Jonas said in a note to clients Friday.
“If Tesla can produce and deliver (even roughly on time) the car they unveiled last night at close to a $35,000 price, then this stock is probably quite undervalued,” he said. “Granted, it’s only a fully refundable thousand dollar deposit, but to achieve well over 100,000 preliminary orders for any car in the first 24 hours, even with no deposit, is an admirable achievement.”
Tesla shares opened up 6% in trading Friday. They gave up some of their early gains by midday Friday, but were still high enough to just about wipe out the stock’s year-to-date losses.
The company’s stock has been under pressure thanks to low oil and gas prices, raising concerns about how viable a mass market electric car can be.
People who bought Tesla’s luxury Model S and Model X probably weren’t motivated by high gas prices, but mass market car buyers are more price sensitive.
Investors also worry about delays and cost overruns associated with the Model X crossover, which went on sale late last year. And production of the Model 3 has gotten off to a slower start than some company watchers had hoped.
Shares of Tesla were down more than 40% year-to-date in mid February.
But Tesla shares have been climbing for the last month as oil prices staged a recovery and anticipation built for the Model 3 unveiling.
