When Reuters reported in April that Tesla had scrapped plans for a long-promised, next-generation $25,000 electric vehicle, the automaker’s stock plunged. Chief Executive Elon Musk rushed to respond on X, his social-media network.
“Reuters is lying,” he posted, without elaborating. Tesla’s stock recovered some of its losses.
Six months later, Musk appears to have backed into an admission that Tesla dropped its plans for a human-driven $25,000 car. He said in an Oct. 23 earnings call that building the affordable EV would be "pointless” unless the car was fully autonomous.
“We can’t make an affordable Tesla unless we come up with something that would make it too expensive.”
Gotcha.
Chinese EV it is, then!
I so badly just want a tiny electric vehicle. I don’t travel much. Just need it to go around town and maybe a town over.
Chevy Bolt? My coworker has one and loves it.
Was looking at it but that’s like the $30k range, no? I can’t afford a 500/mo payment.
Get a couple year old one then.
If you’re on a budget why would you be looking at brand new cars?
China cars are like 3k-5k. I can afford that. Like even one of the China trucks is like 6k-7k or something. I don’t mind getting used, I just don’t want to spend 30k. Or really even above 10k.
Do you need windows? Renault has a couple of small ones, the Twizy and Zoe, in order of size. Dunno if they’re still available. Else in my country they have the BYD dolphin and Smart One Plus.
Americans aren’t allowed to buy BYD personal vehicles…
Yay for freedom
Or import European EVs that aren’t pre-approved. No Renault Twizy.
Nissan Leaf?
A used Bolt is pretty cheap.
Smart Car? E-bike?
I use a regular bicycle. The E bikes are like 1200 and I’d rather use that as a payment towards an electric vehicle.
Fair. Mostly I bike, but my town is pretty small. Two friends have an electric smart car, so I’ve heard stories about them. I came across a couple that runs a delivery service (mostly food) using small EVs. I forget what model.
The Volvo EX30 looks promising
Musk is a fascist bigot. I wouldn’t drive a Tesla if it was given to me for free. Just walking up to it and seeing that T would piss me off. In a way, I’m glad he refuses to build a cheap EV.
it’s easier to raise tariffs so that efficiently produced foreign electric cars are just as expensive. God bless America
Oh, Musk is way too powerful and totally nuts, he’s gone off the deep end. Also he’s gone full asshole, there’s hardly anything redeemable about him these days.
That said, I’d drive any car that was given to me for free, and I won’t pretend otherwise.
Also, despite Musk, Tesla has done amazing things for the auto industry, I’m extremely pleased to see this shift to EVs across the board.
Oh, I’d take a free car; but instead of driving it I’d turn around and sell it immediately. Then I’d buy something that wasn’t a badge of shame.
As someone who works in the industry, and done plenty of work for Tesla, I can create a far greater list of all the things they’ve fucked up in the industry, including electrification.
Not
consumingimplying you’re wrong but I’d really like to see that list.Very, very broadly, I’d say a lot of my concerns boil down to them convincing the broader industry as a whole that cutting costs and delivering a shit product is okay, so long as you’re doing it as a “technology company”
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Pushing out buggy, half-baked SW because “we’ll fix it with an OTA” and a recall has little to no direct financial impact, allowing for you to gamble lives on hopefully getting a SW update out before the bugs cause accidents or deaths, rather than spending the time/money to get it right from the start.
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Removing stuff like important, standard hard controls (buttons/stalks/etc) to make everything a touch control, purely for cost cutting, but acting like it’s because buttons are “old tech”
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Pushing that 100% BEV is the only current solution, rather than pushing for a far cheaper mass improvement of fuel economy and scaling BEVs as HEVs grow too, especially in developing markets.
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Using a proprietary charging standard for nearly a decade, solely as a sales tactic, and only cooperating with other OEMs once it allowed them to collect government subsidies
Those are just a few I can think of off the very top of my head, and the ones I’ve seen have the most impact on the broader industry. I can go into more detail on any of them as well.
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How can somebody just shout “they’re lying” to get their stock back up and get away with it?
Fuck musk.
he’s still building the car. it’s just the price will be double or more.
Leon’s a leech.
There’s at least one sure-fire way to remove leeches.
Expect shit they try to bury in the election news cycle
They still don’t have fully autonomous 100k cars!
I’m guessing that to him, the only market for the car will be for deliveries. Fleet use. He isn’t interested in consumer sales.
