Elon Musk announced that Tesla will hold a delivery event for the first Model S Plaid on June 3 – confirming the first deliveries after a few delays.
It was back in January that Tesla introduced a refreshed version of the Model S and Model X, which brings a new powertrain, new interior, and updated exterior design to Tesla’s two flagship electric vehicles.
When launching the new vehicles, CEO Elon Musk said that deliveries should start within a few weeks – putting the first deliveries in February.
Unfortunately, the automaker couldn’t make that happen.
Three months later, there still hasn’t been any new delivery of Model S and Model X vehicles.
During the release of Tesla’s Q1 2021 financial results, the automaker did note that “the first deliveries of the new Model S should start very shortly,” and Musk said he believes it would happen the next month, which is now in May.
The CEO said that the delay had to do with making sure that the new battery pack in the updated Model S is going to be safe.
Last week, Electrek reported that Tesla sales representatives were confirming some delivery dates in early June for Model S buyers, which was a first indication that things were starting to move.
Now Musk even confirmed that Tesla will hold a delivery event for the first deliveries of the new Model S Plaid at the Fremont factory on June 3:
Tesla actually never ended up holding an event or even a presentation about the new Model S and Model X as it just unveiled it as part of its earnings results back in January.
Musk talked about holding a conference call about the new version of the electric vehicles the next week, but it didn’t happen.
Now that we know there’s going to be a delivery event, we would expect Tesla to have a more detailed presentation of the new version with more details on the updates.
Specifically, we would expect Tesla to comment on the status of the new Model S’s steering wheel.
Tesla is believed to have moved to a steer-by-wire technology for the new Model S, which was unveiled with a butterfly steering wheel.
But several new Model S prototypes were also spotted with a normal round steering wheel, and Tesla should explain the situation at the event.
We did a deep dive on the steering wheel based on information that we obtained in a document Tesla shared with its staff.
At first glance, the biggest change is the butterfly shape of the steering wheel, but there are actually a lot of other changes, like the lack of stalk for drive modes and blinkers.
Tesla is replacing the stalks with force touch buttons on the steering wheel and center console.
Furthermore, the automaker plans to automatically activate the right drive mode (PRND) using its Autopilot sensors to detect whether the car should be in drive, reverse, or park.
We should get all the details in just two weeks.
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Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek
