The World’s Best-Selling EV Is About To Get Cheaper

Tesla has been promising a more affordable “entry-level” model for a while now, with rumors suggesting it may be called the Model 2 or Model Q, but the timeline for this new vehicle has been pushed back several times. In the company’s recent earnings call, it may have given some insight into what we can expect from the entry-level Tesla. As we were already warned, this may not be a new vehicle at all, but rather a heavily decontented 2025 Tesla Model Y.

Tesla CFO Vaibhav Teneja mentioned a June production start for the affordable model, which is just over one month away. Lars Moravy, vice president of vehicle engineering, added that Tesla is capped on what it can build. “Flexibility of what we can do within the form factor and the design of it is really limited to what we can do in our existing lines rather than build new ones,” he said. This information leads us to believe that the new “entry-level” model will need to be based on an existing Tesla.

A Cheaper Model Y Seems A Shoo-In

The Model Y recently received its first major facelift, known internally and colloquially as Juniper, which is currently only available in a single configuration: Long Range All-Wheel-Drive. This version is priced at $48,990, which is $5,000 more than the pre-refresh Model Y in its Standard Range RWD configuration. Tesla could build a cheaper version by getting rid of the front electric motor and removing standard features from the car. Even still, it seems difficult to imagine that Tesla will hit the rumored “sub-$30,000” price. That may include federal incentives as “fuel savings,” as Tesla likes to show on its website.

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Some reports suggested the affordable Tesla might only arrive next year, but these execs say otherwise. “The models that come out in the next months will resemble in form and shape the cars that we currently make,” Moravy hinted. His use of the word “models” could also hint at a cheaper version of the Model 3, which currently starts at $42,490 for the Long Range RWD version.

Tesla Timelines Are… Tricky

The cheaper model is not the only thing in flux right now, as news surrounding the Cybercab is also murky. Tesla’s autonomous robotaxi, which was shown in 2024, isn’t scheduled for volume production until 2026. However, a pilot service is slated to begin in June, starting in Austin, Texas. “I predict there will be millions of Teslas operating autonomously – fully autonomously – in the second half of next year,” company CEO Elon Musk said during the earnings call.

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We wouldn’t get too excited about that claim, however, as Musk previously said he was “very confident” Tesla would have operational robotaxis by 2020. This clearly didn’t happen. Tesla is well-known for pushing back timelines on products: the Cybertruck was late, the range-extender was seemingly scrapped altogether, the Roadster is still “in development” after Musk previously indicated it could be dropped for something else, the Semi is only a beta, and Musk has been promising a $25,000 vehicle since 2020.