Tesla’s Next Car Teased During Shareholders Meeting, Musk Says It’s Already Being Built
Tesla showed a teaser image of its upcoming new car during last night’s shareholders’ meeting in Texas, with the company’s CEO Elon Musk actually going as far as saying that the EV brand is working on launching two new products.
However, judging by the way Musk phrased everything, it’s hard to get a sense of what the Fremont-based automaker actually has in store for the near future. But we can make some educated guesses based on what we already know.
“People always want to know what our next product is, but this is not the time to [unveil it]. We obviously need to have a proper, dedicated product launch,” Tesla’s CEO said during the presentation.
“I just want to emphasize that we are actually building a new product, we are actually designing a new product, we’re not sitting on our hands here.”
Musk then added that Tesla is working on two new products that – he thinks – will amass over five million sales per year:
“So, there are two new products that I think you’ll be very excited about. And both the design of the products and the manufacturing techniques are head and shoulders above anything else that is present in the industry.”
“If I were to guess, just these two new products alone, we will probably make – obviously this is just, you know, Elon’s guess, so you know, don’t sue me – in excess of five million units a year of these two models combined.”
He didn’t go into any details about any of the two vehicles, but if we were to guess, we’d say that Musk was referring to the upcoming refreshed Tesla Model 3 known as “Project Highland” and the Cybertruck, considering he spoke about the all-electric pickup just before teasing the picture of the company’s upcoming model (you can watch the whole thing in the video embedded above).
The Cybertruck is already in the final stages of development, with a finished design, and prototypes are already rolling off the production line at a slow pace, with a commercial launch planned for later this year.
Regarding the updated Model 3, we already know that it has been under development for almost a year and that the carmaker has made several modifications to its Texas Gigafactory, presumably to accommodate for the production of the new EV, which is reportedly going to use fewer parts overall compared to the current variant.
As for the use of manufacturing techniques that Elon Musk referred to, it’s widely known that Tesla will be using not one but two massive Giga Presses to cast large metal components for the upcoming Cybertruck, and maybe this process will also be applied to the new Model 3 “Highland,” in a bid to make the assembly as cost-effective and as simple as possible.
Another possibility is that Musk referred to the so-called robotaxi that is supposed to go into production sometime in 2024. A month ago, after the Cyber Rodeo event at Giga Texas, the company’s CEO said that Tesla is working on “a dedicated robotaxi that’s highly optimized for autonomy, meaning it would not have a steering wheel or pedals.”
Back then, Musk shared that the cost of a future robotaxi ride will be less than a subsidized public bus or subway ticket.
As always, we’d like to know what you think about this, so head over to the comments section below to give us your thoughts.
