It came to life just over a year ago as a pivot for Tesla after CEO Elon Musk canceled two cheaper vehicles that Tesla was working on, commonly referred as “the $25,000 Tesla”. Those vehicles were codenamed NV91 and NV92, and they were based on the new vehicle platform that Tesla is now reserving for the Cybercab.
Instead, Musk saw that Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y production lines were starting to be underutilized as Tesla faced demand issues. Therefore, Tesla canceled the vehicles program based on the new platform and decided to build new vehicles on Model 3/Y platform using the same production lines.
It’s possible. But nobody has ever explained what exactly, of value, can be stripped off a model Y (or a model 3) to make it truly low cost. If you look at a single motor, standard range model, then I can’t think of even $2000 worth of stuff that you can strip out of that.
Some EVs are priced on a par with petrol-powered cars, pressuring sales of the latter, said Cui Dongshu, secretary general of the association, told reporters on Friday.
BYD this year has lowered prices more than rivals and across a wider number of models. It has cut prices of the 13 models that made up 93% of its total 2023 China sales by 17% on average, Reuters calculations showed.
Yep. For a $50,000 automobile, a Tesla is pretty bare bones.
The only thing you could strip away to make the car more attractive is the automation. Lots of older owners would like to see a vehicle without a touch screen and the standard knobs and switches they’re used to.
Perhaps. A stringent application of the existing Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards would pose problems for Tesla’s proposed vehicle design in much the same way as Zoox’s. We had a very long talk about it last year, with some folks vigorously arguing that NHTSA would not take the position that they seem to have taken for Zoox:
But that determination was last year. Now that we have a different Administration, and a number of additional factors that might affect NHTSA decision-making, they might reach a different conclusion. The plain language of the FMVSS (and the fact that NHTSA appears to have now twice determined that they apply to driverless vehicles) might make it difficult for NHTSA to allow these types of vehicles without changing the regulations and/or getting Congress to act, but there will probably be a lot more interest in trying to find an accommodation now than there might have been in 2024.
I don’t think you can go much lower than the current standard range battery size. Once you get into Nissan Leaf territory, then the car loses the status of a general purpose vehicle and becomes a “commuter car”.
I figure this comes to a total of $300-$400 max. When I posted earlier, I went through, in my mind, all the “cool” stuff in the model 3 (or the new model Y) that could be deleted or changed, and it isn’t much.
Rear display.
Cooled/heated seats.
Alcantara coverings.
Ambient light strip.
Replace plastic with fabric seats.
Remove electric passenger seat.
Cheaper roof glass (no silver layer, etc).
Tesla’s approach to autonomy has been to (allegedly) include in every car the hardware necessary for the car to be self-driving. All of the sensors, cameras, and computer hardware are standard features in the car, not an options package - so every car has a lot of tech in it that might never be used.
That simplified production, and positioned every vehicle as a potential customer for a future FSD package. It also enable Tesla to hoover up tons of data from all its cars. But it also means that even the cheapest Tesla vehicle has that stuff as part of the production cost.
If Tesla is really going to move down-market, it might make sense to take that stuff out of the cheapest cars. Someone buying a $25K vehicle is somewhat less likely to pony up $8K for a self-driving option (which is a bit of a luxury feature). If Tesla’s anticipated business model has shifted away from people putting their own 3’s and Y’s into a Tesla Network, and instead using purpose-built Cybercabs for a TaaS system, then it makes even more sense to strip all that stuff out of the cheapest cars.
That might save $2K, when you consider the cost of the computer hardware and all the sensors and whatnot.
They investigated them for safety features in 2023 and nothing came of it.
This report is on 2 incidents where a motorcycle ran into the back of the zoox vehicle. Where I am at the motorcycle would be cited but since this is driverless vehicle they are trying to blame the vehicle?
I doubt Elon would want them to lose because that would be an impediment to his plans but we will see. With this administration though I doubt anything will happen.
No roof glass. Eliminates sourcing and coordinating another element of inventory, eliminates several production steps, easier to stamp out a whole roof than one with a hole that needs to be filled. Bet that’s $1000 right there.
Lots of cheap cars and trucks with a roof glass. Wish I never bought my dodge with a sun roof. They have plastic pipes that run off both sides of the sun roof down the door posts to under the vehicle. The plastic pipes are not very tough so they leaked and I had to figure out the cause and replace them.
Maybe.
One of the front facing cameras doubles as the dash cam and sentry mode (security). (maybe enable these as additional options for $$)
The rear facing camera is required by law.
The two side rear facing cameras are used for blind spot cameras and are displayed with that side turn signal…and used for sentry mode.
The two side front facing cameras have no other use beyond FSD, AFAIK. Maybe they are also used for the sentry mode (security warning)
I’ve seen conflicting reports. I’ve even seen a report that claims that using glass for the roof is CHEAPER than using metal and other structural elements. I’m not sure if I believe “cheaper”, maybe lower manufacturing cost somehow, but I suspect a piece of sheet metal is usually cheaper than a piece of glass.
I thought of that. But then it wouldn’t really be a Tesla. And even if this does take out $2k, which is significant, it still doesn’t bring the total down by enough to end up with a really cheap car.
Furthermore, the big autonomy module likely does a whole bunch of other things, that all cars need to do, so maybe you could delete the $2k autonomy module (and cameras, etc), but you would need to add a $500-800 module to do ABS, emergency brake assist, a rear view camera when backing up, TPMS, etc.
