Tesla Model 3 configurator is going online in ‘late July’ with very few options at first, says Elon Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said today that the company plans to make the Model 3 configurator available online in late July – when they plan to hold the delivery event for the first production Model 3 vehicles.

Musk made the announcement during Tesla’s 2017 Annual Shareholder Meeting today.

Last month, Tesla confirmed that they plan to limit the number of Model 3 configurations to fewer than 100 compared to the Model S’ more than 1,500 different configurations.

But now Musk says that it will be even more limited than that – at least “initially”. He said during the shareholder meeting today:

“Initially, the Model 3 configurator it’s going to be like “what color do you want? and what size wheel do you want?”. That’s basically going to be the configurator.”

Tesla confirmed that they will offer 18″ and 19″ wheel options for the Model 3 and as for the colors, that’s not clear yet, but we have a pretty good idea based on Model 3 release candidate sightings.

There are six different colors that have been spotted on the Model 3 vehicles in the wild today: white, black, silver, red, blue, and Signature Red. If the Signature Red is made available, it’s likely going to be only for early reservation holders. Musk said that those who reserved on the first day would get “something special” with their cars. You can see our poll of colors here. Blue is currently leading.

He added that the configurator will also show what future options are coming later and with a timeline associated with every upcoming option. That’s something he already confirmed in the past, like the dual motor option coming “either late 2017 or early 2018”, he said.

Musk also said that the backlog of orders is now the equivalent of around 18 months worth of production ramp up, which means that someone placing a new reservation today shouldn’t even plan to get their car before 2019.

Last month, we reported that at this point, based on overall deposits, Tesla clearly has over 400,000 and closer to around 500,000 reservations. And the company says its Model 3 reservations are increasing every week.