Musk’s Cheap Teslas Are the Wrong Kind of Cheap

This has not been a vintage year for Tesla Inc. product launches. This summer, it launched a long-delayed robotaxi service that came with a free human. Now, it has unveiled two long-awaited cheaper electric vehicles that are most definitely not the game-changers once promised. But are they enough to do the job? It depends on what that job is.

If the job is to turn around Tesla’s EV sales, these “standard” iterations of the Models Y and 3 aren’t likely to be up to the task. Yes, they are cheaper than the prior base models before subsidies. But the cuts of around $5,000 are less than the lost $7,500 tax credit and leaves them closer to $40,000 than $30,000. More importantly, the price cuts aren’t a reflection of some game-changing manufacturing process. That plan was shoved aside in favor of boosting utilization on Tesla’s existing assembly lines. Instead, Tesla’s famously spare interiors will get sparer in these versions, as a number of features are removed or downgraded: shorter range, fewer speakers and touchscreens, textile seats, manual steering, fewer color choices and so on.