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Tesla Halts Online Vehicle Orders Ahead of Announcement

Tesla Halts Online Vehicle Orders Ahead of Announcement

(Bloomberg) -- Tesla Inc. has stopped taking orders for vehicles on its website and redirected to a page teasing the announcement Elon Musk scheduled for this afternoon.

Attempting to order a Model 3, Model S or Model X directs to the page tesla.com/soon, which reads: “The wait is almost over. Great things are launching at 2 p.m.” Representatives for the electric-car maker haven’t elaborated on tweets Musk sent earlier to promote news that will drop at 2 p.m. Thursday in California.

Tesla shares jumped as much as 1.6 percent to a session high of $319.70 shortly after the page went live. The news is more likely to be an announcement about the company’s lowest-cost Model 3 sedan than a revelation about its upcoming Model Y crossover, Ben Kallo, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co., wrote in a report.

Musk, 47, first unveiled the Model 3 in March 2016 and said it would be available for $35,000 before incentives. As of earlier Thursday, the cheapest version of the car started at $42,900.

--With assistance from Esha Dey.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tom Randall in New York at trandall6@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Craig Trudell at ctrudell1@bloomberg.net, Cecile Daurat

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