The perpetual chase for a genuinely affordable Tesla has hit peak absurdity. Following a report from Chinese media claiming Tesla was quietly reviving development on an entry-level EV, a conventional, $25,000 model (code-named NV91) with the heretical additions of a steering wheel and pedals, Elon Musk performed the most corporate of dismissals. He simply reaffirmed a far more radical, and frankly, ridiculous plan.
Musk’s focus, and by extension Tesla’s, is now entirely on the fully autonomous Cybercab. Set for a launch window between April and June of next year, the Cybercab is a vehicle optimized for autonomy. In other words, it has been engineered without any tedious, human-facing controls, because, as Musk condescendingly puts it, any car with human controls “still looks a bit like a ‘horse-drawn carriage’.
This is the ultimate cynical pivot: the $25,000 price point isn’t for a cheap commuter car to compete with the likes of BYD in the brutal Chinese EV market; it’s for a robotaxi that the company, not consumers, will primarily monetize.
Musk’s reasoning is hilariously purist. If you design a car for human whims, quick acceleration, sharp cornering, you get a different product than one “optimized for comfortable driving”, only meant to cruise gently below 90 mph. The latter, apparently, is the future, while the former is a “pointless,” “silly” endeavor that is “completely at odds with what we believe”.
This high-stakes philosophical gamble leaves the traditional, mass-market consumer high and dry. The company’s half-hearted attempt to address the demand for cheaper models manifested in the slightly cheaper Standard Model 3 and Model Y versions in North America and Europe. These new trims, stripped of features and range, received a lukewarm reception at best, offering only a marginal discount over the fully equipped versions.
When faced with direct questions from investors regarding the possibility of an actually smaller, more traditional EV, a Tesla designed for driving, not for being driven, the company’s head of investor relations, Travis Axelrod, summarily shut down the conversation. “This is not the forum for future product”, he stated, effectively proving that for Tesla, the $25,000 car with a steering wheel is now the unspoken, unspeakable question they prefer to skip entirely.
