Tesla Motors has filed a US patent application to trademark the name Model E – the name it is expected to give to an all-new mid-size sedan due on sale globally within five years.
The Model E, which falls into line with the naming convention of the Californian EV pioneer and its Model S and Model X vehicles – as well as providing a cheeky twist to Henry Ford’s revolutionary Model T -- is intended to eventually be built in the US, Europe and Asia.
“Certainly, within five years we'll have our mass-market electric car available,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk told Bloomberg this week. “We'll start seeing hundreds of thousands of electric cars going to market every year.
A small number of Lotus Elise-based Tesla Roadsters have been sold in Australia, but the audacious Silicon Valley company’s second (and first ground-up) model, the Model S sedan, will not go on sale here until the second quarter of next year.
Right-hand drive production of the Model S began only last week following stronger demand than forecast in the US and Europe, delaying production of Tesla’s third vehicle line, the Model X electric crossover revealed last year.
Tesla plans to produce at least 21,000 examples of its circa-$70,000 Model S large sedan at its Fremont plant in California this year, before doubling that in 2014.
However, even though the Fremont plant has the capacity to produce 500,000 vehicles per annum, Musk said the sales volume expected from its next all-new model – a medium sedan about the size of a BMW 3 Series but half the price of the Model S – will require additional factories.
“We'll try to locate those close to where people are, close to where the customers are, to minimise the logistics costs of getting the car to them. I think long-term you can see Tesla establishing factories in Europe, in other parts of the US and in Asia.”
US website VentureBeat first reported the trademark filing of the Model E name by Tesla on Tuesday this week, but a Tesla spokesperson would not confirm to Bloomberg whether it is the nameplate it intends to use for its mass-market electric car, which is due for release by 2016.
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