Tesla prepares to make 4 million units of its cheap electric car, supply chain sources say

Tesla is preparing to make 4 million units of its next vehicle, a ~$25,000 electric car, based on supply chain sources coming out of China.

With a plan to build 20 million vehicles per year by the end of the decade, Tesla is going to need to expand its vehicle lineup quickly. It not only needs new vehicles in the lineup, it needs cheaper vehicles.

For a few years now, Tesla has been teasing a cheaper $25,000 electric car. It is expected to be unveiled soon, but details have been hard to get.

Now a new report from China-based 36Kr claims to have some information on the new Tesla vehicles based on supply chain sources (translated from Chinese):

Sources revealed to 36 Krypton that Tesla’s upcoming low-priced model is the small Model Y, and Tesla is building an annual production capacity plan of up to 4 million vehicles for it. listed. Regarding the news, Lei Technology consulted Tesla insiders, but the insiders did not answer directly. Under our repeated questioning, they just gave a “no comment”.

According to the report, Tesla plans to distribute that 4 million-vehicle production capacity among several factories across the world, including over 1 million vehicles out of the upcoming Gigafactory Mexico.

Recently, a prototype of a strange-looking compact Tesla vehicle has been spotted in China, and it has been speculated that it could be this new cheaper high-volume car.

City Dwellers’s Take

As always, we should take such reports with a grain of salt. That said, the production capacity and distribution make sense.

Tesla has a capacity of about 2 million vehicles per year, and it would be hard to bring that up to more than 3 million units with the current vehicle lineup.

Cybertruck can potentially bring it to 5 million units, but Tesla is going to need cheaper, high-volume vehicles soon in order to fill that gap.

I think we need to see something from Tesla extremely soon on that front if it wants to stick to its 2030 timeline.