Nov 5 (Reuters) - When Reuters reported in April that Tesla had scrapped plans for a long-promised, next-generation $25,000 electric vehicle, the automaker’s stock plunged. Chief Executive Elon Musk rushed to respond on X, his social-media network.

“Reuters is lying,” he posted without elaborating. Tesla’s stock recovered some of its losses.

Six months later, Musk appears to have backed into an admission that Tesla dropped its plans for a human-driven $25,000 car. He said in an Oct. 23 earnings call that building the affordable EV would be "pointless” unless the car was fully autonomous.

His latest remarks came in response to an investor asking: “When can we expect Tesla to give us the $25,000 non-robotaxi regular car model?”

Musk responded: “We’re not making a non-robo…,” before he was interrupted by another Tesla executive. Musk later added: “Basically, I think having a regular $25K model is pointless. It would be silly.”

  • @psmgx
    51•2 months ago

    Translated: the Chinese won that battle, and TSLA doesn’t have enough R&D to chase self-driving and cheap, esp. given how unimpressive their self driving is compared to competitors

    • ms.laneEnglish
      -18•2 months ago

      Actually read the article: It’s the exact opposite, they’re still making the FSD version.

      They’re not making the version that people can drive.

      • @A7thStone
        14•2 months ago

        It’ll be ready next year I promise.

        • ms.laneEnglish
          1•2 months ago

          It probably won’t, but the article doesn’t say they’ve dropped FSD like the parent poster implied.

      • @then_three_more
        0•2 months ago

        You missed the “and” in the comment you were replying to. They can do fsd or they could do cheap. Not both. Though, to be honest I doubt they can do either.

        • ms.laneEnglish
          2•2 months ago

          The article literally says they’re doing FSD and cheap, together.

          What they aren’t doing is Cheap and Human operated.

          It’s a choice of Cheap+FSD or Expensive+Human Controlled or FSD. There won’t be a cheap human operated model.