Model 2’s Mindblowing Advances
In the wake of Cybertruck’s debut on November 30th, Tesla fans have received a flood of new information - both about the new stainless steel truck, but also about other important Tesla projects on the horizon.
Like the so-called “Model 2”
On December 5th, the folks at Munro Live posted a video of auto industry veteran Sandy Munro interviewing Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk. The vast majority of this sit-down was focused on the Cybertruck - and of course covered a good bit of the engineering details, as Sandy’s expertise gives him better insights there.
However, for a brief few minutes, Sandy was also able to get Elon to discuss a little bit about the upcoming $25,000 vehicle that Tesla announced back at the Investor Day event in March.
Commonly referred to as the “Model 2” by the Tesla community, this new vehicle platform promises to put the company’s foot firmly into the affordable EV market for the first time - as well as give Elon a vehicle to make his first serious attempt at the Robotaxi idea he’s been attempting to work out since the early days of his takeover at Tesla.
In discussions with investors and other executives, Elon has in the past described this new platform as “utilitarian” - it won’t be designed to take anyone’s breath away, it’s really just meant to be someone’s daily driver and nothing more.
The important thing about this new vehicle is the production technology surrounding it.
Elon was very careful about saying anything concrete about production numbers in the Sandy Munro video, but he was very clear about the “mind blowing” technology being developed just to produce this car - which is consistent with what he’s said about the project before.
In order for this new vehicle to work, it would need to not only be cheap, but quick and easy to produce. At the same time the vehicle was introduced in March, large parts of the presentation leading up to it were taken up by executives like Lead Designer Franz von Holzhausen discussing how the biggest advancements in Tesla over the next two or three years will be in the way that they produce their vehicles - not the vehicles themselves.
Both in that presentation, and in the Munro interview, Holzhausen and Musk spoke with excitement about the sheer scale of production that will be possible with the technologies they’re developing here.
“It’s not like any car production that anyone has ever seen.” Musk tells Sandy. And while we are by now aware that Elon can let his excitement get the better of him sometimes, but with Holzhausen mirroring that sort of energy in his earlier presentation, it’s hard to not take notice.
Elon also mentioned to Munro that he looks over the production plans every day - insinuating that the project is already in that phase of development. Now we can’t really know if the vehicle is already mostly designed and ready for some pre-production line testing - or if the design process for this car is so intrinsically linked with the new production processes that both need to be done at the same time - but either way it’s exciting to hear that the project is blazing along at this sort of speed.
It makes sense too, considering that the production headquarters for the 25k vehicle program has been swapped to GigaTexas - which Musk confirms for Sandy in the interview. That decision was made earlier this fall, as it became increasingly clear that the new gigafactory in Mexico would be having a slower construction phase than Tesla was originally hoping for.
Instead, the company moved the new project to where their engineers were: GigaTexas. Elon explains that they’re even planning an extention just for this new production line - a new area which will reportedly be tacked onto the South of the current facility.
After the facility in Mexico is built, it will also be producing the new Model vehicle, and then Berlin according to Musk. Obviously this order is subject to changes - especially if there are more delays in Mexico - but it’s clear that Tesla’s plans for this car are gaining a more solid shape than they had back in March, which is a sure sign that they’re close to some big milestones.
The way Musk is talking here, it seems a good bet to say that the new Model will be unveiled in 2024 - or knowing Tesla fans, will at least be spotted by one of the community drone photographers within the next couple of months. But since the big deal seems to be with the production tech itself, we’re really hoping to get a peek inside GigaTexas soon.