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Tesla's $25,000 EV Could Come as Early as 2022, Top Price Bracket at $31,000

Tesla knows that building fast cars is all nice and good, but if you really want to make electric vehicles mainstream, you need affordable cars. That's what the Model 3 was supposed to be in its day, and that's what the $25,000 EV promised in September plans to achieve next.
Tesla Model Y hatchback 12 photos
Photo: Kleber Silva on Behance
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During last year's Battery Day, Elon Musk revealed Tesla's plan to use its new 4680 battery cell to bring a low-cost electric vehicle to market, with the target being a starting price of just (by EV standards) $25,000. He didn't go into too much detail, but everyone immediately thought about a compact hatchback, seeing as how that's the sweet spot between practicality and cost.

The only thing mentioned during the presentation was that it would be able to cover at least 200 miles (322 km) on a single charge, which seems to be the new bare minimum in every market, though it might be a bit of a stretch over in the USA.

Tesla didn't provide a clear timeline for each of the products announced during the Battery Day event, but the words "three years" were mentioned quite a few times. Considering we still haven't seen the refreshed Model S and Model X, the Model S Plaid, the Semi, the Cybertruck, or the new Roadster, we'd say there's plenty on the EV maker's plate right now, so three years for the $25,000 model sounded just about right.

A report coming from China's Weibo (via electrek) suggests a shift in the production schedule might be possible, with the affordable EV coming as soon as 2022. We realize 2021 has only just begun, so 2022 can mean almost two years from now; we also know Musk isn't afraid to launch a product on December 31, 2021, just so he can claim he was true to his word.

That would essentially make it just one year early, but considering how little time has passed since the initial announcement in September, it's hard to imagine what could have happened to move the production early. Especially when you think about the list of pending models we mentioned before.

Given a choice between the words of the company's CEO and a report from China, even if that CEO is Elon Musk, we tend to give the former more credence than the latter. Here is what the text said, translated from Chinese: "According to the Tesla Gigafactory construction project document exposed on the Internet, Tesla’s new domestic models will be directly produced in the Shanghai Gigafactory. The positioning and selling price will be lower than its Model 3, and the price of the new car is expected to remain unchanged. Between RMB 160,000 and RMB 200,000, mass production and delivery may be as early as 2022."

Just to be clear, RMB 160,000 is $24,708, hence the connection with the model mentioned during the Battery Day presentation.

So, even if the information is accurate, it still contains a "maybe". Add the fact Tesla isn't known for delivering anything earlier than promised, and it all sounds pretty doubtful. Perhaps the most important news here is the fact Tesla hasn't forgotten about the entry-level model, and we could actually see it at some point. Whether it's 2022 or any other year, remains to be seen.
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About the author: Vlad Mitrache
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"Boy meets car, boy loves car, boy gets journalism degree and starts job writing and editing at a car magazine" - 5/5. (Vlad Mitrache if he was a movie)
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