In addition to the much-hyped Cybertruck, Tesla is on the record showing two more future vehicles. Investors should pay attention because of the numbers Tesla is throwing out there.
An official Tesla slide — shown back in March at the Investor Day — showed the two vehicles (above) with whopping big numbers: 300M for the shrouded boxy vehicle and 700M for veiled Model 3-esque car.
This is something to think about as Tesla’s global deliveries surged 83% in the second quarter. And speaking of whopping big numbers, the electric car leader said it delivered more than 466,000 vehicles to customers worldwide in the April-June period — a record.
Speculation
One of the top wagers is that the boxy vehicle is a rumored Tesla van. Musk alluded to this back in 2016. Responding to a Twitter query about a van, he said: “probably makes sense to build off the pickup truck chassis.”
The second shrouded vehicle’s most outstanding feature is the number: 700M. That number dwarfs other vehicles in the slide including the Model 3.
Reddit forums have theorized that this is the “Model 2” — a coverall term applied to Tesla’s future $25,000 vehicle that Musk referenced in September 2020.
At the 2023 Annual Shareholder Meeting in May, Musk made reference to two future vehicles, saying that Tesla is working on “two new products…and both the design of the products and the manufacturing techniques are head and shoulders above anything else that is present in the industry.”
“If I were to guess…Just these two new products alone…we will probably make…in excess of five million units a year of these two models combined,” he added.
For reference, Tesla delivered 1.247 million Model 3/Y in 2022.
At the Shareholder meeting Musk also talked about lower material and component costs, including a next-generation lower-cost drive unit (which uses a permanent magnet motor and no rare earth materials) and lower battery cell costs, among other things.
Model 3 ‘Highland’
Another possibility: a Model 3 ‘Highland’ refresh may be imminent. News from China’s 36kr claims that the refreshed rear-wheel drive (RWD) Model 3 will get a battery upgrade using CATL’s new M3P lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cells.
Musk has championed the use of lithium iron phosphate (LFP) battery technology saying in March, “the vast majority of the heavy lifting for electrification will be iron-based cells,” as Reuters reported. The technology is currently dominated by Chinese suppliers.
There are a host of the other upgrades expected too for the Model 3 refresh.
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