A little while ago we heard that Tesla was planning an affordable Model 2, the car without a steering wheel. Now it would appear that the dream may be over if new reports coming out this week are, in fact, correct.
A report we picked up on yahoo! but accredited to Reuters tells of an impending pivot by Tesla into self-driving robo-taxis instead causing the market to get the chills over stocks in the California based EV manufacturer.
Tesla has not officially responded to the reports but Elon has and, in a Tweet, accused Reuters of lying but provided no evidence that this may actually be the case. However, if this is the case the decision to give up the dream of a mass-market car to be built on a revolutionary new platform then the dream of self-driving tech could also be that little harder to manage.
Tesla, like many USA and European-based manufacturers are having a rough ride of late. They are being overwhelmed by cheap Chinese imports which are threatening to defeat all of them. Tesla is in deep financial trouble and deliveries have ben steadily falling with most believing that at least the short-term future is likely going to be rough.
Back in January, Musk warned that if there are no trade barriers to protect American and European manufacturers from the cheap subsidised Chinese offerings then they would pretty much demolish the fledging operations in most of the rest of the world.
Back in 2019, Musk was claiming that his autonomous car would be serviceable by now and ready to buy, in fact he was so bold to predict that by 2020 there would be a million robo-taxis on the road, he just did not say which road.
Four years later there is still not a viable and commercially successful robo-taxi anywhere in the world, and the hoots of derision only grow louder.
