Sign In or Create an Account.

By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy

Electric Vehicles

Tesla Is Finally Doing the Smart, Obvious Thing

It’s not too late for “Redwood.”

A Tesla and redwoods.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images, Tesla

Elon Musk tried to soften the blow.

On a call with investors last week, the Tesla chief warned of a “gap year” for the company. Its tremendous sales driven by the Model Y crossover would slow, while Tesla’s promised next wave of success was at least a year away. That phase would be powered by “Project Redwood,” a new platform on which Tesla would build a new, smaller crossover starting in the middle of 2025.

It can’t come soon enough. Despite the company’s waning market dominance, it’s still true that as Tesla goes, so goes the EV industry — and frankly, the entire industry feels like it’s entering a gap stage.

Perhaps you’ve heard that the EV vibes are bad. Over the past several months, publications have reported that the world is entering an EV slowdown, and executives like General Motors CEO Mary Barra have given interviews warning of some EV winter. The emerging narrative is that buyer demand for electric is weakening, and that just maybe the automakers got ahead of themselves by racing to electrify their lineups. But as Heatmap showed, that notion is not quite correct.

There is worrying data, yes. Truck buyers, for example, may not have the appetite for electric Ford F-150s and Chevy Silverados to support a mass transition, at least not yet. Lagging charging infrastructure in many parts of the country certainly makes some potential buyers skittish. Yet the traditional automakers’ electric woes arise from more banal concerns, such as rising interest rates dinging all auto sales, and especially Musk’s big price war. Tesla slashed its prices multiple times in 2023, forcing the likes of Ford to do the same and lose money on its Mach-E electric crossover, for example.

The numbers don’t support the case that consumer EV demand has fallen off a cliff. Instead, it looks more like this particular stage of EV development is coming to an end while the next one isn’t quite ready to begin.

Just look at the electric vehicles on offer. Of the best-selling EVs in America that aren’t Teslas, most fit the mold of the industry-leading Model Y, a sleek crossover with about 300 miles of range, with a price tag in the neighborhood of $40,000. The Kia EV6, Hyundai Ioniq5, Volkswagen ID.4, and Ford Mustang Mach-E landed in the top 10 by following this pattern.

Heatmap’s Robinson Meyer has noted that Hyundai and Kia, in particular, have cracked the code of this particular EV moment by offering several varieties of electric (and plug-in electric hybrid) crossover and SUVs in this price range to meet America’s endless appetite for them. Seen in this light, Ford and GM’s struggles are less about waning consumer demand for electrics and more about the fact that Ford didn’t follow up the Mustang Mach-E by flooding the zone with EV versions of the Edge, Explorer, and Escape.

As EVs continue to improve, Meyer noted, more people will go electric not out of environmental concern or because of price shopping, but simply because EVs will be better cars than their combustion counterparts, cold stop. Yet there is another inescapable fact: No matter how long monthly payment plans get, not everybody can afford a $40,000 car, electric or otherwise. (The shifting nature of federal tax credits doesn’t help, nor does the tendency of the dealership system to slap on thousands of dollars of bogus fees on top of the MSRP.)

The next phase of electrification is the true entry-level EV. Price is the killer app, and nothing would reinvigorate EV demand in America like the realization of Musk’s long-teased dream — a $25,000 vehicle that could compete with compact cars like the Honda Civic and Mazda3, or even a $30,000 compact SUV that would go up against the Toyota RAV4s and Honda CR-Vs that patrol American suburbs.

This is, of course, maddeningly difficult to accomplish given battery economics and the tremendous costs involved in designing and manufacturing new vehicles. Tesla’s plan hinges on its “unboxed” manufacturing process that would slash the time its Gigafactories require to build a new vehicle, thus making it more profitable to sell a higher volume of cheaper cars.

As I’ve argued, Tesla could have been further along in this quest if it hadn’t wasted so much time and attention on Musk’s pet distraction, the Cybertruck. Indeed, the company’s future rests not in a stainless steel lightning rod, but in the more boring reality of selling cars to Americans that Hyundai and Kia have already figured out. Just give us various sizes of not-that-different crossovers, and try to keep the price down if you can.

Thanks to the Cybertruck distraction, and Musk’s adoration of the whooshing sound deadlines make as they fly by, it will be some time before Tesla’s car of the future can hit the road. It won’t doom the company — Musk has delivered bad news during earnings calls before that tanked Tesla’s stock price, but only temporarily. And when “Redwood” finally arrives (along with the return of the much-beloved and affordable Chevy Bolt), Tesla may yet again pull the industry along with it.

If that means the start of a new phase, in which most Americans can actually afford an EV, then it’ll be worth the delay.

Green

You’re out of free articles.

Subscribe today to experience Heatmap’s expert analysis 
of climate change, clean energy, and sustainability.
To continue reading
Create a free account or sign in to unlock more free articles.
or
Please enter an email address
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Climate

AM Briefing: Senate Overturns California Waiver

On striking down the California waiver, the tax bill, and BYD

Senate Overturns California Waiver, Defying Parliamentarian
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Current conditions: Showers and thunderstorms in the South and cool weather in the Northeast will make Memorial Day weekend “more reminiscent of late March than late May”At least four people are dead and 50,000 stranded in New South Wales, Australia, due to torrential rainfall that is expected to ease Friday eveningEvacuation orders are in place around Oracle, Arizona, to the north of Tucson, due to the growing Cody Fire.

THE TOP FIVE

1. Senate strikes down California waiver

It’s official: After weeks of speculation and run-up, the Senate voted 51 to 44 on Thursday to overturn California’s waiver from the Clean Air Act to set stricter-than-federal emissions limits on cars and trucks. The vote was along party lines, with the exception of Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin, who joined Republicans in passing the disapproval resolution under the Congressional Review Act. California required companies to stop selling new gas vehicles by 2035, which Republicans had criticized as an “electric vehicle mandate” due to the size of the state and its influence over the automotive market.

Keep reading...Show less
Yellow
Politics

How the Political Theory of the IRA Broke Down

Investing in red states doesn’t make defying Trump any safer.

The Capitol.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

In the end, it was what the letters didn’t say.

For months — since well before the 2024 election — when asked about the future health and safety of the clean energy tax credits in the Inflation Reduction Act, advocates and industry folks would point to the 20 or so House Republicans (sometimes more, sometimes fewer) who would sign on to public statements urging their colleagues to preserve at least some of the law. Better not to pull out the rug from business investment, they argued. Especially not investment in their districts.

Keep reading...Show less
Energy

One Sentence in the House Megabill Will Destroy the Rooftop Solar Model

A loophole created by the House Ways and Means text disappeared in the final bill.

Hammering solar panels.
Heatmap Illustration/Getty Images

Early this morning, the House of Representatives launched a full-frontal assault on the residential solar business model. The new language in the budget reconciliation bill to extend the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed Thursday included even tighter restrictions on the tech-neutral investment tax credits claimed by businesses like Sunrun when they lease solar systems to residential buyers.

While the earlier language from the Ways and Means committee eliminated the 25D tax credit for those who purchased home solar systems after the end of this year (it was originally supposed to run through 2034), the new language says that no credit “shall be allowed under this section for any investment during the taxable year” (emphasis mine) if the entity claiming the tax credit “rents or leases such property to a third party during such taxable year” and “the lessee would qualify for a credit under section 25D with respect to such property if the lessee owned such property.”

Keep reading...Show less