The New $25,000 Electric Car Coming From Tesla

We can look at the announcement of a new electric car coming from Tesla from both sides of the conversation.

Last September, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced plans to build a much more affordable small electric car that will begin production in 2023. This car is already being called the Model 2, but that’s not an official name yet. We don’t know much about this new car, except those plans are to build this new car without a steering wheel or pedals, which is a serious challenge for the company.

How Can Tesla Expect to Sell an EV this Cheap?

The $25,000 price point is hard to achieve for some of the compact cars in the market that don’t have the same package of technology Tesla offers. Tesla says they can reach this price point with the new battery cell and manufacturing efforts that bring the battery costs down by as much as 50 percent. The reduced costs to produce batteries, coupled with the small size of this new electric car could put this new model into the price range quoted. Even though other EVs don’t reach this low price, Tesla seems to think they can get there.

Wait a Minute, Where’s the Cybertruck?

We first saw the Tesla Cybertruck in 2019 and here we are nearly four years later and this truck is still not being sold. What makes Tesla think they can get a vehicle up and running by 2023 when they’ve only recently announced the concept. If you look at most of the models sold by this company, we see that very few show up on time. The Model X, Model 3, and now the Cybertruck all faced delays and changes to the release dates. Don’t expect this new small car to show up before 2025, and that’s if there aren’t more delays with the automotive supply chain.

How Will This New Car Offer Autonomous Driving?

Unless something changes rapidly, we won’t see anything like the Model 2 concept without a steering wheel or pedals in the United States. Tesla’s quoted goal is to offer over-the-air updates across their range of EV models to bring fully-autonomous driving to their entire fleet before this new car is produced. The idea is to gain the approval of regulators for self-driving vehicles across the country. If approved, Tesla can offer this new car without backup devices to take over the driving of the car.

Can We Fathom a World of Autonomous Driving that Soon?

Do you think we will have approval for fully-autonomous vehicles in the next nine months? This approval isn’t likely. It’s going to take a lot more time and proof for regulators to approve vehicles that drive themselves without the intervention of the human driver. Currently, self-driving features can only be used for a short period of time on some highways, but Tesla thinks they can change this in a few short months. It’s highly unlikely this package will be allowed when we turn the calendar to the next year.

Not the First Longshot by Elon Musk

Elon Musk has a history of bold statements with products and technology that take time to develop. So far, he’s only made various electric vehicles, which give us new ways to enjoy driving. Tesla has been in trouble with autonomous technology in the past, and it’s a wonder if this will happen once again. If the track record is any indication, the new small Tesla vehicle might come at a low price, but it will likely show up much later than quoted and require a human driver to operate it on the road. Maybe we’ll see a new electric car with autonomous technology by the end of the decade, but certainly not in the next twelve months.

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