When I first drove the Tesla Model 3 in March 2018, I attracted so much attention from the denizens of Los Angeles that it bordered on embarrassing. The hoi polloi of Beverly Hills walked right by Lamborghinis and Aston Martins to ogle the Tesla. They even wandered into traffic to get a closer look at Elon Musk's new, more affordable, supposedly mainstream sedan. Nine months later, Angelenos have returned to their car-jaded selves. You can't spend five minutes in LA without spotting a Model 3. And that ubiquity signals just how much Tesla has achieved in the past year.

The automaker has had a tumultuous 2018, much of it centered around Musk, his moods, and his tweets. Just for a moment, though, put aside Musk’s aborted plans to take the company private; his ill-advised tangles with the SEC; out-of-left-field cave rescue missives and insults; bizarre interviews; pot smoking; and on and on. If you focus on Tesla the company, then 2018 has been very good indeed. And it couldn't have come at a better time: Musk himself admitted that a successful ramp-up of Model 3 production was key to the success of his young company.

Tesla won't release official figures until the new year, but Kelley Blue Book estimates the company had sold about 160,000 cars (including models S and X) through the end of November. “Last year was around 50,000, so it’s more than triple the sales," says KBB analyst Tim Fleming.

Want more? Read all of WIRED’s year-end coverage

The driver of that tripling is, of course, the Model 3—which Tesla launched in July 2017 but didn't produce in big numbers until this summer. Musk warned of impending "production hell" when he handed over keys (cards, actually) to the first 30 Model 3 owners at the launch. He called it right. The company had major problems at the Nevada Gigafactory, which makes the battery packs for the cars. Musk later admitted he'd pushed too hard for extreme automation, and replaced robots with humans, ripping out a "flufferbot." Eventually Musk had employees erect an extra, almost entirely manual, production line in a tent in the parking lot of Tesla's California factory.

Eventually, though, Tesla got on track. It started building 5,000 Model 3 cars per week, the rate that Musk had noted as a benchmark. You can now get one starting at $45,000, and Musk says the $35,000 version, with fewer features and lower range, will arrive in 2019. (Caveat: Musk has a rocky relationship with deadlines.)

The current price point puts the new Tesla in KBB's "luxury" bucket, but that hasn’t stopped people buying the Model 3. “It will be the top-selling luxury vehicle this year,” Fleming says. That's against all luxury vehicles, crazy popular SUVs included. The next best-selling car, the Mercedes C-Class, comes in seventh. Tesla sold 2.5 times more Model 3 vehicles than BMW sold 3 Series. It's a remarkable achievement, and stands in contrast with the moves by Ford and GM to stop making small cars and sedans in the US.