Elon Musk’s Cheapest Tesla Car Stuns The Competition: Tesla’s most powerful asset is its eccentric billionaire CEO Elon Musk. Musk is an adventurer, a pioneer, a tech guru, and a very competent businessman.
You hardly get all that from many CEOs these days. Tesla deserves all the worldwide recognition it gets because it is set to revolutionize the global car industry and the transportation sector as we know it.
Tesla wants to shock its competition by introducing a new product which would be the cheapest car from its stables. This new product is known as the Model 2. Join us today to look at Tesla’s newest offering and discuss how it will affect the EV market globally.
Tesla has done well for itself. Since it launched the first Tesla Roadster in 2008, we have gotten a pair of saloons, a seven-seater, and a small SUV. We also have the out-of-this-world Cybertruck and the beautiful all-new roadster on the way.
During Tesla’s 2020 Tesla Battery Day conference, Elon Musk confirmed that it will be producing a hatchback, which will debut as the smallest and comfortably the cheapest Tesla yet. This hatchback should be the perfect American alternative to the German Volkswagen ID3.
This hatchback, known as the Model 2, is projected to be the best-selling electric vehicle to date due to its low price entry point, exciting contemporary features, and improved performance. Why are so many people excited about the arrival of this new model from Tesla? Let’s find out.
Developing new technology is an expensive process. Consumers only get to see the final product, not the huge amount of money, expertise, and time that has been spent on development. Electric vehicles are relatively still new, the technology has been around for quite a while, but they only became mainstream and conventional some years back, thanks to Tesla.
It is challenging to convince people that electric cars are viable alternatives to cars with internal combustion engines. About 14 years ago, Tesla’s first car, the Tesla Roadster, went on sale.
People doubted its success because electric cars were perceived as small, terrible, and impractical due to short-range and long recharging times. But Tesla impressed the world by offering a car with 200 to 250 miles on a full charge and a charging time of 3 and half hours using a 240-volt connection.
The first Tesla Roadster was fantastic, but it was pricey. It was priced at 100,000 dollars, which is around 125,000 dollars today. The components of electric cars were costly back then, so Tesla had to sell its cars for a lot of money to not go under due to the financial crisis.
Since then, the technology for electric cars has been proven, parts are getting cheaper, and Tesla can start selling its cars at a lower price. Tesla made a massive change with the arrival of the Model 3 in 2019. At launch, the cheapest Model 3 sold for $35,400.
Now, due to circumstances beyond Tesla’s control and supply chain issues, the price of the Model 3 has risen to $39,990 before any subsidies or potential savings are taken into account. Right now, it is the cheapest car in Tesla’s lineup, at least before the Model 2 debuts.
When the Model 2 arrives, the price drop wouldn’t be the only new thing about it. The new hatchback will have a battery design that’s more powerful, safer, and cheaper, thanks to its new tabless design that uses a new kind of connector to join the individual cells together.
This battery design is 35 percent smaller than conventional batteries that can store and release more electrical energy with less risk of overheating and catching fire. Tesla says that the new hatchback will have a 16 percent more range per kilowatt-hour battery due to these new cells.
This means that even if the new Model 2 battery pack is half the capacity of the one in the Model 3 Standard Range Plus, it should manage about 160 miles on a full charge. In contrast, the entry-level Fiat 500, which costs approximately $31,000, has just 116 miles of range.
The new Tesla would be $6000 cheaper than the Fiat 500 while looking more stylish and having about 30 percent more range. Tesla also plans to use the Model 2’s battery as a structural part of the car’s construction. This would make the hatchback lighter and stronger because the batteries are an integral part of the car and are doing some work to support the car’s underpinnings, not just add extra weight.
Tesla plans to sell new versions of the Model Y that uses the same battery design as the Model 2 in 2022. The Model 2 sports a revolutionary design; it would have a 10 percent mass reduction and use 370 fewer parts for its battery.
The Model 2 will be easier to produce, and it will use fewer materials than the other cars in Tesla’s lineup. The 10 percent mass reduction would also help boost the car’s range by another 14 percent. So, the range could increase from around 160 miles to 180 miles. What do all these mean for performance? Should we expect the Model 2 to be slow since it is cheaper?
Well, Tesla doesn’t do mediocre or unsatisfactory. The car company would probably use one electric motor in the Model 2 to keep the price down. Still, even the single motor is no slouch. The Model 3 Standard Range Plus uses only one motor, but it can go from a dead stop to 60mph in 5.3 seconds. That’s almost half a second quicker than the Honda Civic Type R.
The Model 2 will be lighter than the Model 3, its motor has less mass to move around, and it is sporting new high-tech batteries, so it might be faster than the Model 3. We might be looking at something in the four-second range.
Musk has confirmed that the new hatchback will only cost $25,000, less than half the Model 3 Standard Range Plus price. Other car manufacturers have also tried to offer cheap electric hatchbacks, but none can compete with the Model 2.
The Nissan Leaf hatchback costs $31,670 if you don’t qualify for federal credits. That price only gets you the basics. A model with all the trimmings, including Nissan’s ProPilot driver assistance, costs about $44,920 before incentives, almost the same as a Tesla Model Y.
Like the Model 3, we should expect different versions of the Model 2, including a fully autonomous version. Tesla is testing a beta version of its full self-driving tech that costs about 10,000 dollars, but the price might decrease when the Model 2 is launched. We can’t be sure yet.
Tesla has always maintained the same consistency throughout all its cars. The Model 3 and Model Y are less pricey than the Model S and Model X, but they offer many of the same features that these pricier models offer.
The range might not be as good, you might not get the ludicrous mode that gives you that mind-boggling acceleration, but you get that Tesla feels from every car in Tesla’s lineup. All Tesla cars are built to offer the same driving experience. From the upholstery to the infotainment system, Tesla tries to ensure that no matter how much you paid for your car, you get pretty much the same experience in any of their cars.
Even the full self-driving feature is available on cheaper cars, and we expect it to be available on the Model 2 if you can afford it. The pricier models might get new updates first or get more features like AAA gaming or the yoke steering wheel, but all of them are still Tesla cars.
While Tesla plans to bring its starting price to 25,000 dollars, analysts see the price of electric vehicles falling further than that. The Model 2 is expected to be released in 2023; it will be created and designed in Tesla’s new research and development facility in Shanghai.
The new facility in Shanghai will be Tesla’s first outside the United States. Musk has claimed that the Model 2 will be built in a Chinese style. It has already started accepting design submissions for the Model 2 from qualified candidates, and it has been hiring for its production since last summer.
The Model 2 will be manufactured and exported abroad. It was verified by Tom Zhu, Tesla’s president in China. In an interview with the Chinese state media. Tesla has stated that the Model 2 will be released in 2023, but many people are skeptical because Tesla is notorious for not meeting release dates.
Tesla still has plans like the Cybertruck, Roadster, and the Semi-Truck, which it is yet to release. In a meeting conducted in August 2021, Musk stated that the manufacturing of the new 25,000 dollar Tesla will begin in 2023. According to Twitter sources, the Model 2 prototype has been finished, and a trial production date is set for 2022.
Musk also hinted that the Model 2 might not have a steering wheel when he asked the staff if they wanted the Tesla Model 2 to include a steering wheel and pedals. Tesla did post a poster image of the Model 2 with steering wheels or pedals in 2019.
Unfortunately, it seems the development of the Model 2 has taken a backseat as Tesla focuses on developing its hardware 4.0 for its full self-driving tech. It is unlikely we would see the Model 2 in customers’ garages before 2025.
——————————
Thanks for reading till the end. Comment what’s your opinion about this information “Elon Musk’s Cheapest Tesla Car Stuns The Competition“.
Also Read:
- Elon Musk Officially Started Building Houses
- 38 Amazing Facts About Elon Musk That Many Of Us Don’t Know
- Inside SpaceX New $7 Billion Starship Factory
- SpaceX Is Building A Giant Gas Pipeline – But Why
Information Source: Elon Musk Live