Another announcement from Tesla’s Battery Day has sparked a lot of interest. Tesla boss, Elon Musk said that his EV car company intends to design two new electric car models, and both will be produced at Gigafactory Berlin as well as Shanghai. These new cars are going to the cheaper end of electric cars. So, while we know that we have the Model S Plaid, Cybertruck, Roadster and Tesla Semi in the pipeline, these models sit somewhat beyond the reach of the average Joe.
However, things aren’t exactly cast in concrete with Tesla’s roadmap rollout. Recently, the company spoke about designing and manufacturing new vehicles in Germany and China. And Musk went on about extracting talent from the local engineering and design markets for these new ventures, but also said that Tesla will build teams in order to design new models that will be manufactured in the foreign markets.
Taking to his usual platform, the Tesla CEO confirmed that the new affordable EV costing around $25,000 is not going to be a cheap version of the Tesla Model 3. It seems completely new designs will be devised for production in Shanghai and in Berlin. Twitter user, Cathie Wood, asked Musk: “Predictably, when @elonmusk announced at Battery Day last week that $TSLA would cut the price of a Model 3 to $25,000, several financial analysts panicked, downgrading the stock and/or cutting their price targets. In our view, traditional financial analysts have missed the mark.”
And the CEO confirmed publicly that “We aren’t cutting the price of Model 3 to $25k. I was referring to a future car that will be smaller than Model 3.”
Another Twitter user pried a bit more asking, “Think you’ve mentioned Giga Shanghai & Berlin design centers will both design original cars, does that refer to the same smaller car?” and Elon Musk made it official in his reply, “Both will do original cars”
Tesla has spoke about plans to build a design center in Berlin when he discussed Tesla making a small EV hatchback for the European market. There are define deadlines for the cheaper $25k model but he gave a rough idea that we could expect to see this one hit the market within the next three years.
In July, Musk spread word about plans for a small European version when Volvo purchased a US-made Tesla Model Y and shipped it off to Sweden with the assumed intentions to reverse engineer it. The Tesla CEO commented on Twitter about the story saying, “Berlin Model Y is the one to watch. That is a revolution in automotive body engineering (finally).”
It seems Musk was hinting at Volvo to rather look at Model Y that Tesla is planning to manufacture at Gigafactory Berlin as it’s going to be an improved version. However, at the time of his comment, there were no Model Ys available in Germany, so they can’t do anything except appreciate the thought. On the thread of the Volvo discussion, Musk was asked if Tesla would build a “smaller European style hatchback” and his reply insinuated it was feasible.
So, it seems Tesla is not just going to build cars in offshore markets, but have design and engineering input from the regions as well. This is good news for everyone. Firstly, being able to get your hands on a less expensive Tesla and overseas markets can expect a locally designed model that’s made specifically for their way of life. You can’t please everyone all the time, but Tesla is doing a great job at trying.
