Xia Ri
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has recently announced via X that the company is officially terminating its highly anticipated affordable electric vehicle (EV) project, the Model 2. Instead, Tesla will redirect resources towards AI and robotics. In an internal meeting, Musk bluntly stated that the Model 2 is a product of traditional thinking and that Tesla’s future lies in AI and robotics. This statement directly overturns the company’s core strategic plan of the past three years.
According to sources, the Model 2 was originally scheduled for release in June 2025, with a starting price of USD 25,000 and an ambitious annual sales target of 5 million units. The goal was to replicate the market success of the Toyota Corolla. However, Musk believes that building low-cost cars “won’t change the world,” and has chosen instead to invest in the autonomous robotaxi project and the humanoid robot initiative Optimus.
As early as Tesla’s Battery Day event in 2020, Musk first proposed the idea of developing an entry-level EV, targeting a price of USD 25,000, aiming to capture the mainstream consumer market. However, in late February 2024, after two years of back-and-forth discussions, he convened senior executives from various Tesla departments at the company’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California, with the fate of the Model 2 becoming the central topic of the meeting.
Many Tesla executives believed that the Model 2 could achieve multi-million-unit sales over the next few years, effectively offsetting potential losses from the robotaxi project and providing financial support for Musk’s AI ambitions. More importantly, the Model 2 and robotaxi could potentially be developed on the same platform. Nonetheless, Musk rejected the proposal. Instead, he again suggested reducing certain features of the Model Y to lower its price. Following the meeting, three senior executives who had advocated for continuing the Model 2 project abruptly resigned.
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