'Tesla for the Masses' Will Be Out Friday

The electric car nicknamed the "Tesla for the masses" will go on sale Friday. CEO Elon Musk tweeted that the Model 3 will be out two weeks ahead of schedule after clearing all regulatory requirements, reports the AP. This one has a starting price of about $35,000, but a federal tax credit on electric cars would knock it down to $27,500. That's about half the price of the cheapest Tesla currently on the road. The Model 3 gets 215 miles on a single charge and can go from zero to 60 in under six seconds.

Production will be a big challenge for the company, but Musk has ambitious goals, with the number of Model 3s produced set to increase from 100 in August to 1,500 in September, and then 20,000 in December. Next year, Tesla plans to be churning out about 40,000 a month, or more than 500,000 a year. The stakes are high for the company: Tesla recently surpassed Ford in market value, but NPR notes that it's also lost $2.3 billion over the last five years. (More Tesla stories.)