No $25,000 Teslas for you, says Musk.
Christophe Gateau/picture alliance via Getty ImagesWhen Tesla first announced the Model 3, its headline selling point was its supposed $35,000 starting price. That materialized only briefly, and it hasn’t stopped rumors from churning about a possible Model 2 (or something like that), which would retail for an even more unlikely $25,000. On Wednesday, during Tesla’s Q4 earnings call, CEO Elon Musk definitively debunked those rumors.
“We’re not currently working on a $25,000 car,” Musk said on the call. “We have too much on our plate.”
A central theme of Wednesday’s call is that Tesla remains highly constrained due to global supply chain and chip shortage problems. That’s what prevented the company from launching any new models in 2021, and now, in 2022. Given that Tesla is unable to get production started on vehicles it announced years ago, it would be zany to be working on a car that would likely have a much smaller profit margin.
If you can’t deal with this heartbreak, remember that there are tons of really great affordable used EVs that offer excellent performance and reliability without a new Tesla’s asking price. If that’s not as appealing, you can always wait for Musk’s rumored fleet of robotaxis, something that he says, thanks to Full Self-Driving, will apparently reduce the cost of transit by a factor of four or five. Frankly, given FSD’s track record, we’d start looking at used Chevy Bolts.
Watch this: Tesla’s building a robot
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