Elon Musk has shut down a report that Tesla is scrapping its ‘$25,000 Model 2’ electric car in favor of its ‘Robotaxi’.
For the past few years, Tesla has been developing a next-generation vehicle platform that is going to enable the launch of two recent vehicles: a smaller and cheaper vehicle, sometimes known as ‘Model 2’, and a dedicated self-driving vehicle, which Musk calls “Robotaxi”.
Now, Reuters reports that Tesla has scrapped plans for the previous:
Tesla has canceled the long-promised inexpensive car that investors have been counting on to drive its growth right into a mass-market automaker, based on three sources acquainted with the matter and company messages seen by Reuters.
Musk quickly denied the report – saying that “Reuters is lying”:
However, Musk did reply to a post, seemingly in agreement, suggesting that Tesla may need shifted give attention to the “Robotaxi” somewhat than the “$25,000 car”.
The Reuters report did note that Tesla “will continue developing self-driving robotaxis on the same small-vehicle platform.”
Musk previously said that Tesla plans to unveil its next-gen electric vehicles toward the tip of the yr and launch production toward the tip of 2025.
Tesla is currently constructing its recent production systems for the next-generation at its Gigafactory Texas facility in Austin.
Electrek’s Take
From a strategic standpoint, this made no sense to me. Tesla 100% needs a less expensive vehicle with a view to expand its volumes.
I didn’t imagine the report after it first got here out, especially since I’ve seen plenty of real issues with Reuters’s Tesla reporting previously. We even caught them sneakily back editing a post to make it appear to be Elon lied about calling out their reporting. I wrote a thread about it:
That said, it does sound like there’s something to the report, with at the very least Tesla prioritizing the robotaxi over the cheaper vehicle based on Elon’s follow-up response to the suggestion.
I understand it’s not a reason for bad reporting, but when Tesla had a PR department, it could avoid issues like that.
Credit : electrek.co
