Compact Tesla rumoured for 2025 release
For a long time, the ‘Juniper’ facelift of the Model Y was considered to be the most important model premiere at Tesla in the coming year. The Model 3 has gained significantly in comfort and quality thanks to the corresponding ‘Highland’ revision. But now there is a report from China that a completely different Tesla could be launched on the market in 2025.
As GlobalChinaEV writes, this is said to be the compact model whose development was allegedly discontinued in the spring of 2024 in favour of the Robitaxi on the same platform, which has since been presented as the Tesla Cybercab. The potential model name Model Q is now being mentioned for the compact model with steering wheel and pedals – until now, there has often been talk of a Tesla Model 2, but a Model Q was also rumoured as early as 2022. The portal refers to information provided by Tesla during an investor meeting with Deutsche Bank. Tesla’s Head of Investor Relations, Travis Axelrod, is also said to have attended the meeting.
The Tesla Model Q is expected to start below 30,000 dollars in the USA after the deduction of the subsidy, possibly even at 25,000 dollars. The internal codename of the Model Q is ‘Redwood’. Reuters also mentioned this codename in a report at the beginning of 2024. At the time, it was referred to as a ‘compact crossover’.
There is no information on the body shape in the GlobalChinaEV article; the article image shows a rendering of a Model 3 (pre-facelift) with a compact car rear end. The text remains vague in places, but then goes on to give very specific figures: Compared to the Model 3, the Model Q is said to be 15 per cent smaller and 30 per cent lighter with a length of around 3,988 mm and cost significantly less to produce. There will be variants with one and two motors and LFP batteries with 53 kWh and 75 kWh capacity.
According to earlier reports, the compact Tesla was initially to roll off the production line in the Giga Texas and later also in the Giga Mexico, which is currently under construction. GlobalChinaEV is not currently naming a production location but is apparently not assuming production in the Giga Shanghai. The portal states that the price could be around 140,000 yuan “if produced at Shanghai Gigafactory.” However, the 30,000 dollars correspond to the equivalent of 218,000 yuan.
If the investor meeting was actually about a 25,000-dollar model, the ambiguities in the article mean that not all the information has been leaked yet. And given the model’s history of multiple price changes during development, a further twist would come as no surprise. In principle, however, there could be something to the rumours: Last week, a Bank of America analyst reported that the announcement of at least one new model below the Model 3 and Model Y would be made in the Q1 annual report in April.
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