Elon Musk at the Tesla Model 3 unveiling event
The founder and CEO of the electric car company showed off its new $35,000 sedan. Tesla Motors/YouTube
SHARE

Tesla’s newest electric car, the Model 3, has only been available to pre-order for a little over a day, but it seems to be a hit already: Tesla Motors founder and CEO Elon Musk tweeted earlier today that the company received 180,000 orders from around the world for the Model 3 within the first 24 hours, netting the company approximately $7.5 billion in sales.

Musk followed this tweet up a short time later with another saying pre-orders continued to spike to 198,000.

Both of these values are more than the entire electric car industry sold in the U.S. during the year of 2015, according to a chart from the website Inside EVs now circulating on Twitter.

Inside EVs electric car sales chart

Inside EVs electric car sales chart

Showing sales totals for the U.S. and the globe.

And as Musk noted, the average selling price of $42,000 per car is actually higher than the starting price of $35,000, meaning many of those who pre-ordered went ahead and also purchased additional options for the sleek electric sedan — the most affordable car yet made by Tesla. At this rate, it’s looking like Elon Musk could well turn out to be the Henry Ford of the electric car era.