The white interior will run you another $1,000 on top of the base price, but an all-black interior doesn't cost a dime extra.
Steven Ewing/Roadshow
The early bird gets the worm, and as it turns out, the early bird might have also avoided an abrupt Tesla price hike.
Tesla has raised the price of the mid-range Model 3 by $1,000 to $46,000, according to the automaker's online configurator. The mid-range Model 3 was only announced five days ago, so while the price bump is small, it came out of left field.
Thankfully, there won't be any retroactive price bumps for people who already dived into the ordering process. "We made a slight adjustment to our pricing for Model 3 following the introduction of the mid-range battery last week," a Tesla spokesperson said in an emailed statement. "We will honor the lower pricing for all in-progress orders."
For that $46,000, the mid-range Model 3 offers a long-range battery case with fewer cells inside, dropping its range from 310 miles to 260, which is still super competitive with newer EVs. However, a bit of simultaneous lineup shuffling changed drivetrain options — now, rear-wheel drive is only available with the mid-range 3, while the long-range and Performance models are now only available with all-wheel drive.
Tesla has a big day coming up. Later on Wednesday, Tesla will release its third-quarter financials, the first quarter where CEO Elon Musk said it could pull a profit. We don't know the details yet, but we do know that Tesla built nearly 54,000 Model 3s in the third quarter, which is equal to the entire company's vehicle output in the second quarter.
