Elon Musk gave some hints on Tesla’s next-gen low cost vehicle during the firm’s recent Q4 2023 results call.
“There’s a lot to look forward to in 2024,” he said. “Tesla is currently between two major growth waves.”
While he did not provide full details, the Tesla CEO said: “We are very far along on our next-generation low cost vehicle […] We are very excited by this and this is going to be profound – not just in the design of the vehicle itself – but in the design of the manufacturing system. It’s far more advanced than any automotive manufacturing system in the world, by a significant margin.”
Codenamed ‘Redwood’, the vehicle (also dubbed ‘Tesla 2’) is reportedly a compact crossover, which should help Tesla against its emerging China rival BYD. The Chinese EV maker overtook Tesla as the world’s top selling electric car manufacturer in Q4 2023.
While Mr Musk said that the “timeline should be taken with a grain of salt,” he said that the current schedule sees production of the compact crossover towards the end of 2025.
He said the first manufacturing location would be in Texas, followed by Mexico and a third location decided outside of North America by the end of this year.
“There’s a lot of new technology,” he continued. “The reason I want to put this new revolutionary manufacturing line at Giga Texas is because we really need the engineers to be living on the line – this is not an ‘off the shelf works’ kind of thing.”
Mr Musk did not offer any details on pricing, but he has previously hinted at a more affordable Tesla vehicle that could carry a price tag of around $25,000.
Other updates he gave during the call including the release of Full Self-Driving v12.
This will be rolled out to all customers in the US (who request it) in the weeks to come, a figure cited to be approximately 400,000 vehicles in North America.
In 2023, Tesla hit 1.8 million sales globally, 38% ahead of the previous year. Its rival BYD produced over 3 million NEVs in the same year, though only 1.6 million of those were BEVs.
“In conclusion, we had a great year,” Mr Musk said. “I do see a path where Tesla can be the most valuable company in the world.”
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