Tesla has updated its plans for new vehicles including more “affordable” models.
During the company’s first quarter earnings call, Elon Musk appeared to pull back from previous plans to launch an all-new entry-level car next year that would eventually be built in Mexico and sold at a $25,000 price point.
“We’ve updated our future vehicle lineup to accelerate the launch of new models ahead, previously mentioned start of production in the second half of 2025. So, we expect it to be more like the early 2025, if not late this year,” Musk said.
“These new vehicles, including more affordable models, will use aspects of the next-generation platform as well as aspects of our current platforms, and we’ll be able to produce on the same manufacturing lines as our current vehicle lineup.”
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No further details about the vehicles were shared and there was no mention of the Mexico plant. Reuters reported earlier this month that Tesla had shelved the $25,000 model and delayed the factory to focus on developing a robotaxi.
Musk spoke at length about plans for a robotaxi or CyberCab that will be revealed in August, also reiterating previous proclamations that Teslas equipped with the Full Self-Driving feature will one day be able to be added to a robotaxi fleet by their owners when they don’t need them.
“And something I should clarify is that Tesla will be operating the fleet,” Musk said. “So, you can think of like how Tesla, think of it as combination of Airbnb and Uber meaning that there will be some number of cars that Tesla owns itself and operates in the fleet. There will be some number of cars and then there’ll be a bunch of cars where they’re owned by the end user. That end user can add or subtract their car to the fleet whenever they want, and they can decide if they want to only let the car be used by friends and family or only buy five-star users or by anyone at any time they could have the car come back to them and be exclusively theirs like an Airbnb.”
Prior to the call, Tesla released a redesigned Model 3 Performance for $54,630 that can accelerate to 60 mph in 2.9 seconds, which came days after it cut the price of the Model Y, Model S and Model X by $2,000. It also reduced the price to buy the Full Self-Driving feature from $12,000 to $8,000.
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