Right now, Tesla‘s priority is to increase production capacity, capture market share, and lower costs. Something that is allowing them to achieve significant sales growth every year. But this does not mean that the next moves are exclusively focused on renewals and price drops. Tesla’s next big step will be the new electric platform they are already working on.
This is clear from the preview given by biographer Walter Isaacson, who has shared new details about Tesla’s next-generation electric vehicle platform in an excerpt from his book about Elon Musk. In it, Isaacson details some of the information Musk has documented, including his vision for the next generation of electric car platforms.
Although Tesla announced earlier this year that it would consider building a next-generation platform at the yet-to-be-built Mexico Gigafactory, Isaacson said Musk changed the initial construction location to the Austin Gigafactory. Tesla is supposed to build a new generation of cars at the future Mexico factory, but design engineers want to be close to the assembly process at the Austin plant. Which has led Elon Musk to change his mind.
According to another report from Isaacson, Tesla’s upcoming Robotaxi (autonomous taxi) platform is expected to be inspired by the Cybertruck and share the same architectural design as the $25,000 vehicle, which as we remember, will be manufactured in Mexico.
In this way, Tesla seeks to unify the design and the platform, to be able to produce both the economic model and the Robotaxi from the same production line. A strategic move that they had not tried until now, and that will allow them to offer significant flexibility to adapt production to demand in real-time.
This can open the doors to expanding this format to the rest of the factories, for example providing the Berlin factory with a line for both the Model Y and the Model 3, which would allow them on paper to have space for a second line. from where to get a new model, as its most economical proposal. A blow on the table that will allow production capacity to be expanded more than significantly without having to open new facilities, in more efficient and intelligent factories.
Finally, Walter Isaacson has left a somewhat worrying comment about the design of the economic model. After a design review meeting in February, Tesla chief designer Franz von Holzhausen presented the look of the $25,000 model and the Robotaxi design, to which Musk responded enthusiastically. ” When one of these cars turns a corner, people think they are seeing something from the future .”
Something that reminds us of the words spoken before the presentation of the Cybertruck, which has had the result that we have seen of a radically different design. We will see if Tesla also bets on this with the Model 2.
