There’s no doubting the excitement around the imminent unveiling of Tesla’s third generation car, the Model 3, on March 31st. Last week we reported that Tesla store employees are expecting waiting lines of people trying to get an early reservation in the morning, likely even before they get to see the vehicle.

Additionally, we found out that as of late, the search term “Tesla Model 3” has been trending on search engines, which adds to the evident interest for the upcoming vehicle.

Here’s a quick look at the historical interest of Tesla related search terms over time via Google’s trends tools:

Tesla has been talking about its third generation electric car for years now, but since 2013, Tesla officials have been referring to the upcoming vehicle as the “Model E”, which would have joined the models S and X in Tesla’s lineup to make “S-E-X” with the Model Y to follow later.

The name stuck for a while, but during the shareholders meeting in July 2014, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed that the company had to drop its “Model E” trademark after Ford threatened to sue over having a similar naming scheme. At the time, Musk said that “Ford tried to kill sex.”

Since then, Tesla has been referring to the upcoming third generation vehicle as the “Model 3” with the “3” likely to be stylized with three horizontal lines much like the “E” in Tesla’s logo.

The impact of the July 2014 meeting on both search terms is quite clear:

Now the most recent spike in interest is undoubtedly linked to Musk’s announcement via Twitter that the Model 3 will be unveiled on March 31st:

Model 3 reservations ($1000 down) will be accepted in Tesla stores on March 31 and online April 1 — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 11, 2016

The CEO sent out the tweet in the early morning of Feb 11, which led to an all-time high of interest during the day:

It quickly settled down, but the interest remains consistently higher than it ever was before the confirmation of the unveiling event.

Another interesting metric is the interest per city, which could indicate where it will be more difficult to get an early reservation:

Since an early Tesla Model 3 reservation could determine if you get the $7,500 US tax credit or not, it could lead to more traffic in the stores in those areas (not applicable to Montreal and Vancouver of course), but we don’t yet exactly know how the reservation process will work other than it will be in-store on March 31st and online the next day.

Musk added that Tesla will be releasing more information about the event (the event itself, not the Model 3) in the coming weeks. At that point, we should get a better idea of how the day will unfold and what will be the best way to get an early reservation.

Featured image: Google trends for “Tesla Model 3” and “Tesla Motors” search terms and screenshot of Tesla’s design studio from 60 minutes.

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