Elon Musk Says the $25K Tesla Model Isn't Happening, Roadster Further Delayed
All that and the rest of the news you can use from Tesla's latest, somewhat confusing Q3 earnings call.
Tesla held its third quarter earnings call on Wednesday, October 23 — and, amidst the congratulatory messaging around a 17% rise in revenue year-over-year and forecast up to a 30% rise in vehicle deliveries by 2025, Elon Musk revealed that some of his promises aren't quite coming to fruition as he'd originally stated.
First off — and perhaps most disappointing to Road & Track readers — the long-awaited, long-delayed Tesla Roadster will be pushed back even further, Musk explained to investors. Tesla's Q2 2024 financial report stated that the team has completed most of the engineering (a claim Elon has made as far back as 2021) and the electric sports car was set to arrive in 2025, but Musk failed to confirm this timestamp on last night's call. Instead, he used a roundabout metaphor about cake to say that Tesla had more important matters to attend to than the Roadster, in spite of the hopeful future buyers who have been waiting for up to seven years after putting down deposits of $50,000 to $250,000
"The reason it hasn’t come out yet is because the Roadster is not just the icing on the cake, it's the cherry on the icing on the cake," Musk said on the call. "Our larger mission is to accelerate the progress toward the sustainable energy future, to try to do things that maximize the probability that the future is good for humanity and for Earth."
"And so that necessarily means that the things that are kinda like dessert ... we’d all love to work on the next-gen Tesla Roadster, it is super-fun, and we are working on it ... but it has to come behind the things that have a more serious impact on the good of the world."
Official materials from Tesla's earnings letter show the Roadster as "in development" and list the region of sale as "TBD." Tesla first announced the resurgence of the second-generation electric sports car in 2017 and slated it for production in 2020, but after the myriad delays since then, it's anyone's guess when the actual moment of truth will come for the car.
The start of Roadster production could also be delayed by the fact that Musk now apparently wants to add flying capability to the Roadster — a feature the Tesla boss suggested would be a tribute to his buddy, fellow PayPal Mafia member and billionaire lobbyist Peter Thiel — thanks to the addition of SpaceX rocket-tech thrusters.
Compounding the disappointment around the delayed Tesla Roadster was Musk's assertion that the long-promised $25,000 Tesla would not arrive. Verbally teased all the way back in 2018, Musk has changed his tune on offering a genuinely affordable, human-driven electric vehicle — and the credit or blame, according to him, lies with automation.
When asked for a timeline on the $25,000 regular non-Robotaxi car model, Musk explained that the future is autonomous, insinuating that pursuing autonomy and affordability aren't compatible for the brand right now.
"Basically, having a regular $25K model is pointless. It would be silly. It would be completely at odds with what we believe," Musk said.
Musk previously deflected such questions with claims that a $25,000 model with full autonomous capability was only a few years away at the 2020 Battery Day event. And, to his credit, the recently revealed Robotaxi will allegedly cost less than $30,000, indicating that affordable offerings aren't off the table for Tesla; they'll just be couched under the development of level 5 autonomous technology, meaning we'll likely never get behind the wheel. Similarly, Musk reiterated his belief that Tesla would be making money through paid autonomous taxi services in Texas and California by next year, pending strict regulatory approval.
"We think that we'll be able to have driverless Teslas doing paid rides next year," Musk said. "I would be shocked if we don't get approval next year."
Tesla
Tesla claims that the Robotaxi will begin production before 2027, and the autonomous cab could support Musk's claim that more affordable models will aid in volume growth. However, relying on the mass adoption of a two-seat autonomous taxi just two years from now seems like a thin sheet of ice to stand on when chasing continued profitability. Queried about the six other new models Tesla plans to launch next year, Musk said one of them could sell for under $30,000 with federal incentives included, but failed to provide any detail on the model itself.
Despite these disappointments and shifting timelines, Tesla continues to dominate the electric vehicle world with a strong fist and reasonable profits. Total third-quarter revenue was up 8%, while vehicle sales rose 6.4% in the third quarter, for a total of 462,890 units sold this year. Deliveries declined 2.3 percent year-over-year, but Tesla manages to make its weight in selling regulatory credits to its competitors, with $739 million worth of emissions credits sold to other automakers.
