Elon Musk has revealed that Tesla is targeting 2023 as the year for its affordable sub $25,000 Tesla electric vehicle and surprisingly he also revealed that it may not have a steering wheel. He said that it will be a fully autonomous vehicle that could be the most affordable one of its kind. "Tesla will make a compelling $25,000 electric vehicle that is also fully autonomous," said the Tesla CEO.
Musk revealed the new vehicle and its price point was enabled by the new 4680 battery cell technology that the company had showcased last year at its battery day event. This battery is already being prototyped by Tesla's partners Panasonic, CATL, LG Energy Solutions and Samsung SDI.
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Musk has revealed the new battery cells reduce cost by up to 50 per cent. Many people believe it will be called the Tesla Model 2 and will be a hatchback, something that Musk has hinted at himself. It will likely be manufactured at the Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory though will be exported from there, globally.
Tesla has already announced plans for an R&D centre in China and there are plans for a Chinese style electric car which will likely also target markets like India.
These new batteries were announced at its recent battery day event
A car without a steering wheel could be a massive challenge for Tesla as it will likely not get regulatory approval in many markets. But Musk is moving ahead with the plan regardless and he was quoted saying at an internal Tesla meeting saying, "Do we want to have this car come with a steering wheel and pedals?"
Tesla is gung ho about its Full Self Driving software which is slated to come out of beta in a couple of weeks. Tesla is also working on improving the cameras and has a new FSD chip which will debut with the Cybertruck.
The Model 3 is the most affordable Tesla and it is being evaluated for launch in India as well
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Tesla has made an audacious bet on camera-based autonomous technology which it believes it can keep improving thanks to its Dojo supercomputer which is the fastest in the world for training AI algorithms. Tesla harvests data from its numerous drivers and testers and then uses that data to train its algorithms forming a neural net on the supercomputer and then learning's are fed back and processed on device using the FSD chip on Tesla cars with the full self-driving package.
Till now, this has been deemed to be level 2 autonomous technology, however, Tesla is shooting for the moon and doesn't even want steering and pedal on the car, hence it is clear the ultimate goal is to achieve level 5 autonomy.
