Tesla making Model Y Juniper cheaper with Robotaxi production savings

According to Elon Musk, Tesla's next generation platform for mass market electric vehicles like the Robotaxi or the Model 2, is a true revolution in low-cost car manufacturing. Instead of going with the Model 2, however, Elon said that Tesla will announce a Robotaxi first, and even set the unveiling date for August 8.

He clarified that this won't be "quite betting the company, but going balls to the wall for autonomy is a blindingly obvious move." "Everything else is like variations on a horse carriage," he added, as the Robotaxi was his original vision until he agreed to be talked into releasing a Model 2 first, sold on its futuristic design.

The Model 2 plans are also not completely discarded, according to a new insider report, but the focus has changed. Instead of releasing a conventional mass market electric vehicle, Tesla plans to apply what it learns from a Robotaxi built on its platform to lower the production costs of its bestselling cars, with a keen focus on making the Model Y cheaper.

Tesla already advertises the Model Y as a $30,000 vehicle with the tax credit. A further reduction of the Model Y price via production cost cuts would basically offset the need for the proverbial $25,000 Model 2 that would've been a smaller, cheaper version of its bestselling SUV.

According to the report, the Model 3 is also set to benefit from the low-cost manufacturing platform that Tesla has developed for the Robotaxi. The process will take time, though, so the likely drop in manufacturing costs is not expected to manifest before the release of the Model Y Juniper refresh next year, and is likely to be a continuous effort.

To make the Robotaxi work, Tesla is bent on building a second supercomputing facility at its Austin factory, laying off some of the people that would've been engaged in a Model 2 production. Together with the one in New York, the two new processing centers will be crunching the numbers from all the data Tesla gets from the drastic expansion of miles driven with FSD active.

These accumulated miles skyrocketed after Tesla started giving away 30-day trials with a new vehicle, as well as lowering the FSD purchase and subscription prices, all in the run-up to the Robotaxi announcement in August.

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