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.

  • @[email protected]
    11•16 days ago

    Correct, because Uncle Sam is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to make oil and gas as cheap as possible while automakers spend bullions every year on stock buybacks. America’s poor investments are all China’s fault.

    • @[email protected]
      -3•16 days ago

      You think European, Japanese, and South Korean automakers are American companies? That’s weird.

      Do you really think BYD and other Chinese state-owned auto manufacturers have found some secret sauce that nobody else can figure out allowing them to somehow build a car cheaper than anyone else in the world, or do you think it’s more likely that the state is paying for them to have artificially low prices?

      Furthermore, let’s imagine the rest of the world matches these subsidies, what is your end goal here? Are you wanting everyone in the US to dump their old car in a parking lot and go out and buy a new one every year like people used to do with smartphones? That’s not exactly good for the environment and is just consumerism on steroids.

      • @[email protected]
        2•16 days ago

        The way you write your argument out as questions makes you sound like Tucker Carlson or one of his “I’m jUsT aSkInG qWesTioNs” deciples.

        It comes off as condecending and disingenuous, even if some of your points may be correct.

        • @[email protected]
          0•16 days ago

          Condescending, sure, but I don’t see how this makes it disengenous, and I’m only responding in-kind to this user who continues to write snarky-ass, passive-aggressive replies rather than writing an actual rebuttal.