Tesla casually dropped a new teaser image into the invites for the Tesla Model Y reveal event that went out last night, several hours and thousands of email refreshes after CEO Elon Musk tweeted to confirm that invites would be sent out that day. The reveal event is set for March 14th at 8pm at the Tesla Design Studio in Hawthorne, California, which is also where Tesla revealed the Model 3 nearly 3 years ago (click that link for completely exclusive video footage of the test track on that night).
The new image gives us the first look at the actual exterior of the car (sort of) and shows off similar headlight accent lights to those used in the Model 3. It also previews the higher ride height of the Model Y compared to the Model 3, while still maintaining the wide, stable posture of a Tesla.
We expect the Model Y to follow in the same footsteps as the Model X did compared to the Model S, in this case building a higher SUV body on top of the existing Model 3 platform. However, this product addition will come without all the one-off, headache-inducing innovations Tesla crammed into the X (like the falcon-wing doors). In fact, we know those are definitely out of scope for the Model Y, which will instead have normal doors — presumably, doors just like the Model 3 but a bit taller. For example, look for the manual door handles from the Model 3 to make another appearance as lower cost, functional alternatives to the electrified versions used on the S and X.
