Tesla

Tesla’s Next-Gen EV Is Planned for 2025 — And It Might Be the Most Affordable Yet

Let’s just pray that it doesn’t take as long as the Cybertruck.

by Jackson Chen
Updated: 
Originally Published: 
Tesla sketches of next-gen compact EV
Tesla

The Tesla model you’ve been waiting for could be around the corner. Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, confirmed during the latest earnings call that the company will deliver a mass-produced EV sometime in 2025. Musk was vague about this upcoming EV’s details, only teasing that Tesla would start production on it in the second half of 2025. However, Reuters reported the day prior that the EV maker was planning to make an “entry-level $25,000” model, alongside one meant as a robo-taxi.

There’s a chance that the latest model that Musk mentioned during the earnings call, which is codenamed “Redwood,” will be its most affordable yet. Even though Tesla hasn’t officially landed on a price yet, an EV in this price range would help the company compete with ultra-affordable competitors overseas like BYD.

This $25,000 EV from Tesla could share a lot of design similarities with the Cybertruck.

Tesla

A Mass-Produced Model

While we don’t have much to go off of, we know that this $25,000 model is expected to run on Tesla’s “next-generation platform.” Musk also confirmed that Tesla is planning to build its next-gen EVs at its Gigafactory in Austin, Texas. According to Reuters’ sources, Tesla has already been looking for quotes from suppliers and is forecasting a weekly production volume of 10,000.

Thanks to a previous Axios report that talks to Musk’s biographer Walter Isaacson, we know that Tesla may be going with a similar futuristic design as the Cybertruck for this upcoming model. However, there’s a chance that this upcoming model could be Tesla’s fully autonomous EV that doubles as a robo-taxi. This would line up with Tesla’s recent update to its Full Self-Driving beta that adopts an AI-heavy approach.

Tesla could employ new manufacturing processes to ramp up the production of its next-gen EVs.

Tesla

Press X to Doubt

The real question is if Tesla can actually hit that confirmed 2025 delivery date. Musk did say in the earnings call that he was “often optimistic regarding time,” but this schedule still feels extremely ambitious to us. Don’t forget that Tesla is still ramping up deliveries of its Cybertruck, which was first announced in 2019. In true Musk fashion, he also said during the earnings call that Tesla would “need the engineers to be living on the line” to meet its production goals.

Despite kickstarting the EV industry, Tesla is facing a lot more competition nowadays, particularly in the lower-end EV segment. With the Model 3 costing around $36,000 with tax incentives, we’ve been waiting for an even more affordable option from Tesla for a while now.

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