Comments on Tesla’s Electric Crossover Strategy During the Mid-2025 Experiment: The Case for a Future E-Cybertruck

Earlier this year, Reuters reported that Tesla was planning to start production on an all-new electric crossover vehicle in mid-2025. 10,000 vehicles are expected to be produced weekly by the company, which invited suppliers to bid. Coincidentally, it was speculated that this could be a version of the Cybertruck that had been designed for mass-market consumers.

Musk has said the more affordable EV would be built on the company’s next-generation vehicle platform, which is still under development. During an earnings call earlier this year, Musk said the company is targeting production “towards the end of 2025” but warned of delays due to the complexities of the manufacturing process.

The Master Plan Part Deux states that this will be the so-called “Tesla Network”. He wrote that if you put your car in the shared fleet via the phone app, you will also be able to make money off of it while you are at work or on vacation.

Meanwhile, Tesla’s driver assistance tech, called Full Self-Driving, is technically only a “level 2” on the five-point autonomy scale, meaning the car can pilot itself only with driver supervision. The first self-driving software update to be labeled as not being a test is fromTesla.

The National Transportation Safety Board, the US’s transportation safety watchdog, has been very critical of the driver assistance technology released by the electric car maker. An investigation by the nation’s top road safety regulator concluded late last year that drivers could use the technology if it didn’t give them enough time to pay attention. Over-the-air software updates were used to fix customers, as the company did not agree with regulators’ analysis. Humans are more prone to accidents than driver assistance features.

While Tesla spent years developing the expensive, polarizing Cybertruck, the company lost its place as the world’s top producer of electrified vehicles to China’s BYD. The company says it produced 3.02 million electric vehicles in the next two decades, more than any other company.

Musk said that if there aren’t trade barriers, most other car companies in the world will be destroyed. They are very good.

But Musk denied at least part of the story. “Reuters is lying (again),” he posted, without specifying what the news agency got wrong. Hours later, he posted that the next product release would be focused on robotaxis.

There have been growing pains for other automated vehicle developers in the last half-decade. A technology that was once touted as “just around the corner” proved both harder and way more expensive than once planned. Today, years after most major auto and tech manufacturers pledged self-driving software, just a few major players remain. After billions of dollars in dedicated research and development and more than 7 million miles driven, Google spinoff Waymo only provides paid taxi rides in two cities—Phoenix and San Francisco—though it plans to launch in Austin, Texas, as well as Los Angeles and the wider San Francisco Bay Area soon. Another robotaxi competitor, General Motors’ Cruise, has put its entire service on pause after a driverless taxi struck and injured a pedestrian, which led to a clash with California regulators. If Tesla wants to roll out robotaxi service everywhere its cars are sold, its plans will be even more ambitious than these competitors’, who have been working on the problem of autonomy for years.