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Elon Musk wasn’t smiling, when he said, “Welcome to Model 3 handover.” Through a single silver door, a few moments before, he had entered the room, flanked by nearly two dozen employees including an engineer and designer who joined him on stage. Black floor, rich red curtains, and slate grey backdrop and a white Tesla logo. There were no introductions necessary. At first, Musk’s voice had a breathy quality. He seemed nervous. Nerves were understandable on the precipice of what might be the most substantive moment in the brand’s history, the first stages of the rollout of its mass market car, the Model 3. In Musk’s mind, he has succeeded in building the best car that $35,000 can buy, an understandable perspective for an entrepreneur that believes in the project he has overseen with kid gloves. What he wanted the journalists to know: “We put a lot of effort into designing the car. I don’t think you can find a better looking car at this price point,” he said. (And later as we saw the car from the inside out, except for the peculiar aspects of its front end, we had to agree.)

He said that there are 10,000 unique components in the cars and that its has eight cameras and 12 ultrasonic sensors. The standard car will be sold for $35,000 and has a 0 to 60 mph of of 5.6 seconds and a range of 220 miles. The long range version will be sold for $44,000, has a range of 310 miles and a 0 to 60 time of 5.1 seconds. While today there are 6,124 superchargers by the end of next year there will be 15,000 superchargers. Like the Model S and Model X before it, he also said the Model 3 will eventually be capable of full autonomy. Ultimately, people will be able to get their cars serviced without ever leaving their home. “IT’S AN AMAZING CAR, BUT WE’RE GOING THROUGH SIX MONTHS OF MANUFACTURING HELL.” What seemed to cause him angst: the hellish aspects of manufacturing. He referenced a chart that showed an S-Curve, and kept referring to this curve throughout his remarks. “It’s an amazing car, but we’re going through six months of manufacturing hell. It’s going to be pretty great, but it’s going to be quite a challenge to build this car,” he said. “Floods, fires, tornadoes, ships sink, if anything interrupts supply chains, that will interrupt the production.’ Yet, he sounded characteristically resolute in his promise to achieve his ambitious goals. “We have simplified the manufacturing process dramatically. In the same amount of space to build 50,000 cars, we can build 250,000 Model 3s.” What he didn’t want to talk much about: When will customers get their Model 3s. He was vague about the number of reservations. “One question in particular is showing up in my Twitter feed a lot, quite a lot a lot,” he said. Citing the fact that the company doesn’t have a true marketing arm, he said “We do everything we can to unsell the car.” At that moment he paused and seemed to take in the weight of the moment. “This is a great day for Tesla. It’s the thing we’ve been working towards.

The whole point of Tesla was to make a great affordable electric car. It was never our goal to make expensive cars, we didn’t want to make a car that no one could buy,” he said. “If you’re trying to make a difference in the world, you’ve got to make cars people can afford.” After answering a handful of questions, he left the stage, punching away already at the digits on his phone. His employees slipped out of the silver door behind him. Elon Musk had already moved on to the next thing. He had a big night ahead. While some analysts may be concerned lately over Tesla's ability to manufacture the Model 3 on time, one Wall Street firm believes his peers are missing the big picture. Nomura Instinet's Romit Shah predicts Tesla will dominate the electric car industry like Intel did in the PC market during the 1990s. Shah initiated coverage on the stock with a buy rating and set a 12-month price target of $500, representing 44 percent upside to Tuesday's close. It now has the highest Tesla price forecast out of the 19 research shops that cover the company, according to FactSet. "I see Tesla as a technology company whose biggest asset is manufacturing and the end products happen to be electric vehicles and energy storage. You've got a company with exponential growth," Shah said on CNBC's "Power Lunch" Wednesday. "When we look at Tesla and where it is trading at today, we think there is a lot of room for the [valuation] multiple to expand." The analyst said the economies of scale from Tesla's Gigafactory enables the company to manufacture batteries with the best energy density. As a result, the Model 3 costs $140 per mile of range versus the competition's $236 per mile of range, according to the analyst. "We believe that Tesla has an insurmountable lead in vehicle range per dollar; benefits from what we believe is a largely inferior competitive field, which should help sustain current growth," he wrote.

Consequently, the analyst predicts Tesla sales will rise to $58 billion in 2021 from $8 billion last year. In addition, he estimates the company's total vehicles deliveries will increase to 877,000 by 2021 from an estimated 112,000 this year. Wall Street "is concerned about production, as it appears that Model 3 will be severely supply-constrained; however, we believe this is a short-term issue," he wrote. "We see significant momentum for alternative energy vehicles globally and expect Tesla's Model 3 to lead the first stage of mass-market electric vehicle adoption." Tesla is one of the best-performing stocks in the market this year. The company's shares are up 63 percent year to date through Tuesday compared with the S&P 500's 13 percent return.