When Reuters reported in April that Tesla had scrapped plans for a long-promised, next-generation $25,000 electric vehicle, the automaker’s stock plunged. Chief Executive Elon Musk rushed to respond on X, his social-media network.
“Reuters is lying,” he posted, without elaborating. Tesla’s stock recovered some of its losses.
Six months later, Musk appears to have backed into an admission that Tesla dropped its plans for a human-driven $25,000 car. He said in an Oct. 23 earnings call that building the affordable EV would be "pointless” unless the car was fully autonomous.
Along with European, Japanese, and South Korean automakers. Nobody is building EVs this cheap because no other country’s government is dumping hundreds of billions of dollars into selling them well below their actual cost.
Correct, because Uncle Sam is spending hundreds of billions of dollars to make oil and gas as cheap as possible while automakers spend bullions every year on stock buybacks. America’s poor investments are all China’s fault.
Aww that’s so sad. It’s a shame nobody has the economic wealth and power to absolutely dominate the market if they put a equal amount of money into EVs. I guess we’ll just have to keep spending our money on the military
So instead of healthcare or housing, you’d rather our tax dollars go to Ford and GM so that you can buy a cheap new car every year or two? At what point in history were new cars ever obtainable for most people? I make decent pay and even I have never owned a brand new car because buying used is a much better value.
You’re arguing for the Walmartification of the auto industry and all it’s workers, where locally made goods are replaced with a bunch of cheaply made goods from an overseas sweatshop and all the local businesses go under. This isn’t good for anyone but the Chinese government.
Every country subsidized their auto industry, it’s just that all the benefit goes directly to ceos except in china apparently.
Ford received 9 billion in June.
Ford received a loan to use toward building new factories for EV production. In China, Ford would owned by the government and funded with taxpayer dollars directly.
Damn, sounds like nationalizing an industry leads to lower costs and cheaper products.
Sure, when that rationalization comes with lax environmental regulations and zero worker protections along with heavy subsidies that expire just after their last competitors close up shop. What are you left with then?
Those automakers are at least trying to compete by building small cars. I see more ads for electric f150s than i see for compact cars in north america.
Domestic manufacturers almost entirely phased out small cars long ago before EVs were even significant because they can’t build them as well as companies like Hyundai, Toyota, and Honda. Even those companies have phased out tiny cars because nobody in the US was buying them.
Why don’t you buy a Chevy Bolt, or Nissan Leaf if you want a small, cheap EV?
It isn’t they can’t build them, it is moreso they don’t want to because of profit margins and influences from CAFE standards makes small cars hard to build and big SUVs easier due to some backwards fuel economy regulations.
The profit margins are insane compared to sedans.