On Friday, Reuters came out with an “exclusive” report that claimed Tesla had cancelled the development of its mass-market $25,000 car, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter.
Instead of this $25,000 car, Reuters claims Tesla will be shifting to self-driving robotaxis instead using the same platform. The report says Tesla’s affordable car is codenamed NV91 and H422
Tesla CEO Elon Musk was quick to refute the story, saying on Friday morning, “Reuters is lying (again).” He also added later, “Reuters is dying,” in response to stats showing year-over-year and month-over-month drops in traffic to the news website.
Reuters is lying (again)
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 5, 2024
As for the $25,000 next-gen Tesla platform? Musk replied with the side eyes emoji, after Tesla follower Sawyer Merritt shared the following thoughts, suggesting the robotaxi and next-gen platform are the same, based on what Tesla has explained before.
“However, here is my general thinking. Tesla’s low-cost $25k car and the Robotaxi were always going to be based on the same platform. They were going to be very similar, but the $25k version was going to have a steering wheel,” said Merritt.
“Maybe Elon and the team have been so impressed with how good FSD 12 has performed and were maybe thinking they should be shifting even more resources to the Robotaxi/FSD effort,” he added.
“This doesn’t mean the $25k car is canceled. Again, they share the same platform,” said Merritt, to which Musk seemingly hinted at confirming these statements.
With Tesla’s latest version of FSD 12.3.3, which is available for free trial right now to all owners, the company has shared a version of the autonomous tech that is just so good compared to before. We’ve had zero intervention drives with V12.3.3, whereas the previous V11 has struggled big time.