The First Production Tesla Model 3 Was A Birthday Gift To Elon Musk

You'll excuse me for assuming that billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk would just inherently be getting the very first production Model 3, well, because he's the CEO, but that wasn't the case. Somebody else reserved it and decided to gift it to him.

Perhaps it's a poor reflection of my own logic, but if I spend over a year hyping up what's supposed to be the biggest revolution in cars since Ford made a production line, I would naturally want the first trophy of success.

But in the case of the very first Tesla Model 3, serial number "1", revealed to the world on Twitter last night by Musk, it was actually a birthday present to him from Tesla board member Ira Ehrenpreis.

Evidently, Ehrenpreis was actually the very first person to put the full deposit down on a Model 3, making him the first person owed a car by the way Tesla handles its deliveries. Instead of taking delivery, Ehrenpreis offered the car to Musk as a 46th birthday present. Now Ehrenpreis will be taking delivery of the second-ever Model 3 off of the production line.

It's still not clear what the exact specification of the car is, but if all of Tesla's promises hold up, it should have the hardware for Tesla Autopilot, a range of at least 215 miles, and a zero to 60 mph time of 5.6 seconds. It's kind of odd that we haven't seen more of the first production Model 3 since last night—you know, stuff like the interior—but I'm sure they'll get around to it eventually.

What a lovely sentiment from one rich guy about to get stupidly more rich to another rich guy about to get stupidly more rich.