A Mini Model-Y
On October 18th, Tesla’s 3rd Quarter earnings call took place, and we got a lot of details on the company’s operations over the summer - but we also got a bit more detail on Tesla’s upcoming $25,000 next-gen vehicle.
During the meeting, CEO Elon Musk and other Tesla executives seemed to confirm that the new vehicle will be some sort of smaller crossover, calling it a “mini Model Y”.
And while Elon was quick to stress that the design will be “cool”, he said that the point of this vehicle will be a simple, cheap car, meant to get a person from A to B. He says:
“[...]Just to be clear, it will be cool, but it’s utilitarian. It’s not meant to, you know, fill you with magic.[...] It will still be beautiful, but it’s utility,”
Which is about what we expected from earlier conversations about this cheaper vehicle. But the biggest point made about the new platform during the Q3 call was that the design will be centered around ease of production.
The main goal of the design team will be to optimize this new EV for cheap and easy automation with the wider aim of achieving a higher throughput rate of manufacturing that “is unheard of in the auto industry.”
And that would be because Tesla is anticipating this being a popular car, and because Elon wants to use the design to launch another attempt at the Robo Taxi idea - something made easier with a cheaper vehicle platform.
To go with that, the executives made mention of GigaTexas being the intended location for the start of production - as we found out back in September with the releases from Elon’s biography. This makes more sense when you factor in the company’s new approach to GigaMexico - saying that the slowed pace for the new facility will help design it’s new production systems alongside the development of the new vehicle - so that once the next-gen car is ready to roll, GigaMexico will be ready to produce it at high volumes.
That said, it’s more than likely that - just like most other new vehicles in Tesla’s fleet - the “mini Model-Y” will probably start the design and prototyping process at the Kato Road facility, and reports are that the line there is already being retooled.
It’s pretty clear that Tesla itself is very excited for this new vehicle. Sales for their other cars aren’t doing poorly - the company is still the biggest seller of EVs in the US - but they’re not wrong in thinking that a truly affordable car will do extremely well in pretty much every market.
And with prototyping on the horizon, we might get lucky enough to spot some of these small cars in California sometime next year.