Tesla will unveil its Model Y crossover SUV on March 14th during an event at the company’s design studio in Los Angeles, CEO Elon Musk announced Sunday. The new electric car will be Tesla’s fifth since the company was founded in 2003.
The Model Y will share about 75 percent of its parts with the Model 3, which is currently Tesla’s most affordable car. Musk said the Model Y will be about 10 percent bigger, cost about 10 percent more, and will have slightly less range than the Model 3. The Model Y won’t have the “Falcon Wing” doors that are found on Tesla’s bigger SUV, the Model X according to the Verge.
More details on specs and pricing will be revealed at the event, according to Musk, and Tesla will offer test rides, meaning the company likely has a few pre-production prototypes already finished. Musk also said on Sunday that Tesla will unveil its electric pickup truck “later this year.”
Tesla will build the Model Y at the company’s Gigafactory outside Reno, Nevada, and the vehicle is supposed to enter volume production in 2020. Tesla also eventually plans to make Model Ys at the Gigafactory it’s building in Shanghai, China.
Musk’s announcement comes just three days after Tesla finally made the long-promised $35,000 Model 3 available to purchase. The company also announced last week that it is transitioning to an online-only sales model going forward, is closing “many” of its stores around the world, and is laying off an undisclosed number of workers.
Tesla has only shown one teaser image of the Model Y to this point: a simple black-and-white silhouette. But the company’s been talking about the car for years. In 2015, Musk tweeted the name of the Model Y before quickly deleting the tweet. He also went back and forth on whether the compact SUV would be built on the same technological platform as the Model 3, before ultimately deciding to share technology between the cars in order to be able to bring the Model Y to market on time. Musk said Tesla signed off on the final design late last year.
Musk had previously joked that the Model Y would be unveiled on March 15th “because the Ides of March sounded good.” A few Chinese media outlets had speculated earlier this month that Tesla might wait to reveal the car at April’s Shanghai Auto Show.