Electric car group Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) is raising US$1.4bn to fund the ambitious launch of its new mass market model.
Founder Elon Musk stunned watchers recently when he said he wanted to produce 500,000 cars in 2018, a number seen as optimistic given teething problems encountered with its existing versions.
The new mass market car, the Model 3, however, has seen a huge number of orders placed something that prompted Elon Musk to up his forecasts.
In 2015, the company only produced around 50,000 vehicles.
Final designs for the car have not been released yet but the company is confident demand will rise even further.
'If we wanted to, we believe that we could further increase the number of Model 3 reservations with minimal effort,' Tesla said in a statement.
Some 8.2mln share are to be sold at a price of US$205 each, raising the total value of the sale to around US$1.7bn including shares to be sold by Musk.
The billionaire owns 26.7% of the company, which is currently valued at around US$30bn.