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We read the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook so you don’t have to.
When former President Donald Trump exited the Oval Office in January 2021, he left behind a record of environmental rollbacks unrivaled in modern U.S. history. Over his 1,461 days as commander-in-chief, Trump replaced, eliminated, or otherwise dismantled more than 100 environmental rules — at least — from repealing the Clean Air Act to allowing coal plants to dump toxic wastewater into lakes and rivers to declaring open season on endangered gray wolves.
President Joe Biden then rolled back most of the rollbacks, largely before their full impacts could be felt, which is why some experts say the most significant climate consequence of Trump’s presidency was actually the loss of four years that could have moved the green transition forward.
Had all Trump’s policies gone into effect, the nonpartisan Rhodium Group estimated at the end of 2020, they would have added an additional 1.8 gigatons of CO2-equivalent to the atmosphere by 2035 — more than the annual energy emissions of Germany, Britain, and Canada combined. But even though we never felt the full brunt of them, the medical journal The Lancet estimated that the policies undertaken during his presidency were responsible for 22,000 deaths in 2019 alone due to sharp increases in things like asthma, heart disease, and lung cancer.
Now Trump is once again the presumed Republican nominee and currently leads Biden in general election polls. Were he to win, he has a ready roadmap for building on his dubious environmental legacy: Project 2025, a 920-page document developed by the right wing think tank The Heritage Foundation.
Project 2025 isn’t just a climate plan, or course — it’s a comprehensive proposal, covering everything from immigration to abortion, education, pornography, and child labor. Though billed as a “presidential transition project,” its wishlist includes numerous actions that would require Republican control of both chambers of Congress (admittedly possible, though currently looking like a longshot) to enact. Undaunted, the document sets its sights on the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s landmark climate legislation, which — since the U.S. is the world’s second-largest greenhouse gas emitter — is all but necessary to keep the planet off the path to 1.5 degrees Celcius.
Here is how, precisely, Project 2025 aims to gut the IRA, shrink environmental protections, and slow forward momentum on climate change.
“‘Cheap grace’ aptly describes the Left’s love affair with environmental extremism. Those who suffer most from the policies environmentalism would have us enact are the aged, poor, and vulnerable. It is not a political cause, but a pseudo-religion meant to baptize liberals’ ruthless pursuit of absolute power in the holy water of environmental virtue … They would stand human affairs on their head, regarding human activity itself as fundamentally a threat to be sacrificed to the god of nature.”
Republicans have cannily turned “climate” into another culture war buzzword. As with Critical Race Theory before it, this rhetoric strategy divorces the climate movement from what it actually is — a disparate and diverse constellation of ideas for how to move forward in the face of the reality of human-driven global warming — and flattens it into a boogeyman that voters can easily dismiss. Rather than allow for honest debate over the upsides and drawbacks of LNG or of preserving ecosystems versus quickly building out renewables, the effect is to shut down any and all conversation before it can even start.
Project 2025 both outlines and embodies this strategy. In the foreword, Heritage Foundation president Kevin D. Roberts bafflingly characterizes climate as a “pseudo-religion”; elsewhere in the document, “climate extremism” is often lumped alongside “abortion, gender radicalism … and other woke ideas.”
For good measure, the Project 2025 playbook also uses religious metaphors to code any concern about the environment as being morally wrong or even evil. Republicans have already picked up on this cue: “We should not be bending the knee to this new religion … We are flogging ourselves and losing our modern way of life bowing to this new god of climate,” Florida Governor Ron DeSantis argued during a Republican presidential debate last year.
“The National Labs have been too focused on climate change and renewable technologies. American science dominance is critical to U.S. national security and economic strength.”
As part of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Biden administration channeled $1.5 billion to the Department of Energy’s national laboratories for “innovative research in clean technologies” and “advancing U.S. energy security.” This has been essential for “de-risking” the otherwise prohibitively expensive technological advancements necessary for reaching net zero.
Project 2025, naturally, wants none of that: “The three National Labs run by DOE’s [National Nuclear Security Administration] should continue to focus on national security issues,” Bernard McNamee, the former commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission under Trump, writes in the document’s chapter on revamping the department. Additionally, the “ill-advised attempt to expand the National Science Foundation’s mission from supporting university research to supporting an all-encompassing technology transition” (a mischaracterization) should be reconsidered, and “there should be a review to measure, prioritize, and consolidate DOE programs based on a range of beneficial factors, including degree of relationship to national security.” (While addressing the nation’s climate goals is an NSF priority, it is not done at the expense of supporting university research. Also, the current director of the NSF is a Trump appointee).
The Trump administration was memorably hostile toward science, and there are no signs he’ll change his heart during a second term; he’s already vowed to revive “Schedule F,” which reclassifies many government researchers and scientists as at-will employees, making them easier to “clean out” if they “frustrate his policies.”
Still, it does appear that the Heritage Foundation sees some usefulness for scientists: “The next administration should fund the design, development, and deployment of new nuclear warheads, including the production of plutonium pits in quantity,” Project 2025 says.
“The next conservative Administration should rescind all climate policies from its foreign aid programs (specifically USAID’s Climate Strategy 2022–2030 ); shut down the agency’s offices, programs, and directives designed to advance the Paris Climate Agreement; and narrowly limit funding to traditional climate mitigation efforts.”
The United States is the single greatest historical contributor to climate change, but Project 2025 has little sympathy for nations that might be suffering as a result. “The [Biden] administration has incorporated its radical climate policy into every USAID initiative,” Max Primorac, a Heritage Foundation research fellow, complains in the document. “It has joined or funded international partnerships dedicated to advancing the aims of the Paris Climate Agreement and has supported the idea of giving trillions of dollars more in aid transfers for ‘climate reparations.’”
Notably, Biden has not promised climate reparations — despite Trump and other Republicans’ frequent claims to the contrary. And while climate change is “a top driver of humanitarian need and human suffering, particularly for the poorest countries,” according to the United Nations, the former president slashed $200 million from environmental initiatives in his 2019 budget, including investments to help nations move away from heavy carbon-emitting industries.
“Taxpayer dollars should not be used to subsidize preferred businesses and energy resources, thereby distorting the market and undermining energy reliability.”
Among the programs and offices Project 2025 wants to eliminate (or at least substantially reduce) funding for are: the Climate Hub Office; the Clean Energy Corps, the Office of Domestic Climate Policy; the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy; the Grid Deployment Office; the Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon; the Conservation Reserve Program; the Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations; the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights; “the activities of EPA advisory bodies”; the Office of State and Community Energy Programs; ARPA-E; the DOE Loan Program Office; the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management; “grant programs for things like energy storage and the testing of grid-enhancing technologies”; “carbon capture utilization and storage programs”; the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program; the Bureau of Energy Resources; the Office of Emergency Management; the National Flood Insurance Program; and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (more on that below).
“Support repeal of massive spending bills like the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and Inflation Reduction Act, which established new programs and are providing hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to renewable energy developers, their investors, and special interests, and support the rescinding of all funds not already spent by these programs.”
Project 2025 opposes green subsidies across the board. It’s especially twitchy about programs aimed at helping “the private sector deploy and market clean energy and decarbonizing resources” — because, supposedly, the “government should not be picking winners and losers.”
Still, while it’s uncertain how much damage a Republican president could do to the Inflation Reduction Act without the help of a conservative-controlled Congress, Project 2025 makes clear there are lots of places conservatives can chip away, including going after “subsidies of electric vehicles,” “subsidies for transit expansion,” and subsidies renewables like wind and solar. Additionally, the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy “is a conduit for taxpayer dollars to fund progressive policies, including decarbonizing the economy and renewable resources.” That won’t do: “Eliminate EERE,” it says, or otherwise defund it.
“While individual investors may prefer to invest in ‘green’ companies, ‘woke’ companies, or companies with greater board diversity, and may even be willing to sacrifice some financial gains to do so, the question relevant to [the Department of Labor] is whether, and under what conditions, fiduciaries should be permitted to follow this path as well.”
If we’re being honest, though, isn’t the whole “ESG is evil” thing kind of last year?
“The new Administration’s review will permit a fresh look at past monument decrees and new ones by President Biden. Furthermore, the new Administration must vigorously defend the downward adjustments it makes to permit a ruling on a President’s authority to reduce the size of national monuments by the U.S. Supreme Court.”
President Trump was responsible for the most significant reduction in protected land in U.S. history. When he took office, Biden reinstated the protections — mainly in Utah’s Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. Project 2025 prioritizes rolling back the rollback of the rollback, but making it stick by taking the case to the conservative-controlled Supreme Court.
The former acting Bureau of Land Management director under Trump, William Perry Pendley, writes in the section on reforming the Department of the Interior that Biden is “abusing National Environmental Policy Act processes, the Antiquities Act, and bureaucratic procedures to advance a radical climate agenda,” and directs an incoming Republican president to “seek repeal of the Antiquities Act.” Republicans and Democrats alike have used the Antiquities Act over the decades to protect scenic and culturally significant places, including the Grand Canyon, Zion, and Olympic National Parks. Any Supreme Court ruling could effectively curb the ability of future presidents to protect scenic and culturally important parts of the country.
“NOAA consists of six main offices ... Together, these form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry and, as such, is harmful to future U.S. prosperity.”
Thomas F. Gilman, writing on reforms for the Department of Commerce, gets right to the point: “Break up NOAA.” The agency’s “emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable,” he claims, adding, that “its current organization corrupts its useful functions.”
In practice, that would mean the National Weather Service should “fully commercialize its forecasting operations,” since “Americans rely on weather forecasts and warnings provided by … private companies such as AccuWeather,” Gilman writes. It’s a notable shoutout: Barry Lee Myers, the former CEO of AccuWeather, was briefly a Trump nominee to, uh, run NOAA.
Gilman has ideas for the Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, too, writing that it “provides theoretical science” and is “the source of much of NOAA’s climate alarmism,” and should therefore be “disbanded.” Data from the National Hurricane Center is further ordered to be “presented neutrally, without adjustments intended to support any one side in the climate debate.”
Echoing the Trump administration’s hostility toward the sciences, he goes on to allege that “scientific agencies like NOAA are vulnerable to obstructionism … if political appointees are not wholly in sync with administration policy” — never mind that disagreement is one of the most essential parts of scientific research and progress.
But don’t worry: Project 2025 also calls for an elevation of … “the Office of Space Commerce.” Phew.
Republicans are going to make dishwasher cycle times a culture war or die trying.
Project 2025 dictates that “Congress should reform the Natural Gas Act” to “eliminate political and climate-change interference in DOE approvals of liquefied natural gas exports.” Currently, the DOE must decide if it is in the “public interest” to allow LNG exports to non-free trade agreement countries — the only part of the permitting process that could even potentially consider the export terminal’s impacts on frontline communities or their effect on climate change more largely
How? By narrowing the Natural Gas Act to only consider “whether there is a need for the natural gas” and the “impacts of the actual pipeline itself, not indirect upstream and downstream effects.”
The next Republican president should “immediately” reopen the Arctic to drilling, expand the controversial Willow drilling project, max out offshore oil and natural gas lease sales, and restart coal leasing in Wyoming and Montana, the authors write.
Mandy Gunasekara, Trump’s former Environmental Protection Agency chief of staff, details almost gleefully how the agency’s regulatory powers will be dismantled, from preventing downwind states from “over-controlling” their upwind neighbors to loosening car emission standards and beyond.
Since 1968, California has been allowed to set stricter vehicle emission limits than the federal government thanks to a Clean Air Act waiver; other states are welcome but not required to opt in. As president, Trump revoked California’s right to include greenhouse gases in its emissions considerations and barred other states from adopting its criteria. That seems like it’s back on the table — and could be headed to a consequential decision in the Supreme Court.
Project 2025 proposes a fleet-wide average of 35 miles per gallon, far below current benchmarks of 49 miles per gallon by 2026 and 58 miles per gallon by 2032.
There is no question that the management of wild horses and burros is a big problem for the Western United States. But Project 2025 waves off strategies like “expanded adoptions” and “more effective use of fertility controls” as “not enough,” writing that “Congress must enact laws permitting the BLM to dispose humanely of these animals.”
Project 2025 aims not only to gut the Endangered Species Act, but also to “direct the Fish and Wildlife Service to end its abuse of Section 10( j) of the ESA,” which is being used to reintroduce grizzly bears in Washington state and wolves in Colorado.
Project 2025 says that “the Department of Energy should end the Biden Administration’s unprovoked war on fossil fuels, restore America’s energy independence, oppose eyesore windmills built at taxpayer expense, and respect the right of Americans to buy and drive cars of their own choosing, rather than trying to force them into electric vehicles and eventually out of the driver’s seat altogether in favor of self-driving robots.” But as far as roadmaps go, that doesn’t look much like a way forward — it looks like holding back the inevitable. If that’s the case, then self-driving robots start to look good.
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Berkeley-based Copper was selected to supply 10,000 stoves to the New York City Housing Authority.
Last year, New York City went shopping for 10,000 induction stoves so it could ditch gas in its public housing. Now it's ready to make a purchase.
The New York Power Authority and NYC Housing Authority have selected Copper, a Berkeley, California-based startup that was formerly known as Channing Street Copper Company, as the winner of their Induction Stove Challenge, Heatmap has learned. The agencies are planning to award the company a $32 million, seven-year contract to design, prototype, test, and install its stoves in apartments throughout the city.
As I wrote when I covered the launch of the contest in 2023, the goal is not just to improve the lives of NYC public housing residents by helping them avoid the toxic fumes of cooking with gas, but also to spur a larger market transformation that lowers the barriers to induction stoves for everyone.
These aren’t just any induction stoves. Manufacturers were challenged to design an appliance that’s compatible with a standard 120-volt outlet so that it doesn’t require an expensive electrical upgrade to install. Most products on the market require a 240-volt outlet.
The news of the winner was buried in the minutes of a NYPA Finance Committee meeting that took place in July, when Authority staff submitted a request to the committee to recommend that its Board of Trustees approve the award. The Trustees approved the award at a meeting on July 30.
It’s unclear whether the contest ultimately fostered much innovation. The meeting minutes say that only four companies submitted proposals. I’m aware of at least two startups — Copper and Impulse Labs — that were already designing induction stoves for 120-volt outlets prior to NYPA’s challenge. Both companies solve the issue with a similar solution — their stoves come with built-in batteries that can supply extra voltage as needed.
In response to a question about why NYPA selected Copper, a spokesperson pointed to the fact that the company has already designed, developed, and manufactured stoves with similar specifications to what the contest was calling for. “From the competitively procured proposal and interview, the company demonstrated their deep understanding of both residential electrical systems as well as battery equipped products,” they told me.
Still, the award has the potential to make this technology more accessible by bringing down the cost through economies of scale. Currently, Copper’s least expensive stove sells for $5,999; NYPA said the stove delivered for the program is expected to be below $3,000, but NYCHA is still negotiating the cost and other aspects of the product before fully awarding the contract. (Copper was not able to respond to questions about the award as it has not been officially announced yet.)
That price also doesn’t take into account the avoided cost of redoing the electrical work in the buildings. Ultimately the order could also be much more than 10,000 — NYPA has said that 12 other housing authorities representing more than 300,000 housing units have signed up to support the initiative. There’s also a good chance that the stoves will be eligible for at least a 30% tax credit.
Once the contract is fully awarded, the next step will be for Copper to produce a single unit for testing before moving on to the pilot stage, where it will produce and install 100 stoves. If the pilot is successful, the agencies will purchase at least 10,000 units.
The same agencies are in the pilot phase of a similar contest called Clean Heat For All, which aims to bring new heat pumps to market that can be installed in a window rather than requiring costly construction work. Last winter, they ran a pilot in two dozen NYCHA apartments with the winning units — models from the startup Gradient and veteran manufacturer Midea. NYPA reported this summer that the units “provided consistently comfortable temperatures throughout the pilot period, with residents reporting high levels of satisfaction,” and said it planned to study the tech’s cooling capabilities next.
From the national to the state to the local level, the state is about to hold some of the country’s most crucial elections.
In 2022, the Arizona Republic published a sentence many Democrats had dreamed of reading for decades: “Arizona,” the paper announced, “is a blue state.”
At the time, it felt true. In 2020, Joe Biden won the Grand Canyon State — only the second time a Democrat had done so since Arizona broke for Harry Truman in 1952 — and Democrat Mark Kelly defeated Republican Sen. Martha McSally in a special election to fill the late John McCain’s Senate seat, a victory that helped the Inflation Reduction Act get over the finish line. The 2022 midterm elections confirmed that the Democrats’ wins in the state hadn’t just been a one-time occurrence: Kelly successfully defended his seat, securing a full term; Katie Hobbs won the governorship; and Adrian Fontes beat a January 6 participant to become the secretary of state, Democrats all.
With the 2024 election still a little more than a week away, it’s too soon to tell whether the blue state proclamations of 2022 were premature. But Arizona hasn’t been looking terribly cerulean. In 2023, the Republican-held state legislature passed eight of 16 anti-environment bills introduced and stranded 22 pro-environment bills without committee hearings. Republican voter registration in the state has also swelled since 2016 as Democratic rolls stayed relatively stagnant, giving the GOP an edge in a place where 10,457 votes can make all the difference.
Arizona is just one state out of 50 (or 11 electoral votes out of 538, if you prefer), but it represents a curious microcosm of the high-stakes climate and energy elections happening all over the country this November. Or perhaps it is not so curious: Arizona is on the front lines of the climate-related impacts of droughts, longer and nastier heat waves, ozone pollution, and wildfires, while also being in a position to weigh the trade-offs of crucial clean energy developments like building new energy transmission, critical mineral mining, and utility-scale solar. “It’s like an incubator. There’s just so much happening here, it’s ready to burst,” Jane Conlin, a co-leader of the Tucson chapter of the Citizens' Climate Lobby, which has been engaging in get-out-the-vote efforts with the Environmental Voter Project, told me.
Aside from its electoral college allocations, the most consequential race in Arizona this cycle will be for outgoing Independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s seat. The state is currently leaning slightly toward Democratic Representative Ruben Gallego, who could help stem a total hemorrhaging of blue seats from the Senate — which, in turn, would have implications for the passage of any decarbonization legislation in the next administration.
Two U.S. House elections in Arizona could similarly help determine the balance of power on Capitol Hill come January. AZ-01 is the wealthiest congressional district in the state, in the northeastern corner of Phoenix’s Maricopa County, where a former E.R. doctor is trying to unseat a seven-term Republican incumbent in a battle that has centered on abortion access. (The district is also home to the Rio Verde Foothills, which made national headlines in 2022 when Scottsdale cut off its water supply due to drought-related shortages.)
But it’s the other race, in the sixth congressional district spanning the suburbs of Tucson, that looks more like a proxy battle between different climate ideologies. Kirsten Engel — who previously worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and serves as the co-director of the Environmental Law Program at the University of Arizona — is challenging Juan Ciscomani, a Trump-endorsed moderate conservative who has backed residential solar projects, promoted himself as an advocate for a “secure water future,”and, earlier this year, co-sponsored a bill seen as a first step toward a carbon border tax. (As his opponents quickly point out, he also voted against the IRA; Ciscomani has also been tied to a groundwater scandal involving a Saudi Arabian-owned alfalfa farm.)
Engel previously lost a tight election against Ciscomani in 2022, and has made abortion a centerpiece of her campaign, too. But she has also gone aggressively after the Republican for his alignment with the mining industry, including his support for a proposed open-pit copper mine that opponents say will pollute Tucson’s air and waterways; supporters, meanwhile, say it’s critical to create a domestic supply chain for the energy transition. The League of Conservation Voters, which identified the sixth congressional district election as one of its priority races, is running ads in the state playing up this pollution angle.
Engel herself has slammed the proposed mine, which would be built on public lands, as a “giveaway” to a foreign mining company, and touted the need to protect the region’s “spectacular scenic vistas and the tourism economy.” She has also sought to go toe-to-toe with Ciscomani on water conservation, though as Grist has reported, drought and water rights can be tricky for Arizona politicians to run on because voters don’t have a firm grasp of how the complicated policies work.
The future of climate policy at the regional and municipal levels in Arizona is also in play. Democrats could potentially flip the balance of power in the state House and Senate, each branch currently having just a one-seat Republican advantage, and restart movement on the slate of stalled pro-environmental bills. (The Democratic governor’s term runs through 2026.) “The state legislature in Arizona is so critical,” John Qua, the campaign manager of Lead Locally, told me. “Not only does building a democratic trifecta get the state closer to passing policy that tackles climate change in some of the ways we might more typically understand it — like moving towards clean energy — but it also makes it much likelier that the state legislature will pass water conservation policy.”
The 11 races are “all at a razor-thin margin,” Qua told me, though climate is unlikely to be the issue that tips the balance in any of them. That goes for just about any race in Arizona — except the state’s Corporation Commission, which Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo covered earlier this week. Currently, the ACC is operating with a four-to-one Republican majority, but with three Democrats, two Green party candidates, and three Republicans (including an incumbent) running to fill three seats, there’s a wide-open chance that candidates sympathetic to clean energy policy, including the state’s massive solar opportunity, could take control.
“Arizona could lead the world in solar power if politicians would only let it,” Nathaniel Stinnett, the founder and executive director of the Environmental Voter Project, told me. “But that isn’t going to happen unless the climate movement starts showing up in unstoppable numbers whenever there’s an election.”
Conlin, who co-leads the Tucson chapter of the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, has been working on the ground to reach the 230,000 potential first-time environmental voters that Stinnett and his team have identified in the state. (EVP numbers released earlier this week showed that those who vote based on climate issues were about 20% more likely to have submitted an early vote than the average voter.) During a recent folklife festival CCL volunteers attended, “I think about only 25% of people [we engaged with] were really aware of the Arizona Corporation Commission,” Conlin told me. But she’s excited nevertheless: This year, the ACC poll is on the front of Arizonans’ ballots, rather than the back, making it harder for even low-information voters to overlook.
The state is also a case study of how an elected body as small and seemingly insignificant as a school board can make a difference in the progress toward decarbonization. The Tucson Unified School District board of governors will vote next week on a climate action plan that would set a goal of reaching net-zero emissions by 2045. If successful, TUSD would be one of the first school districts in the nation to have implemented such a plan.
Arizona is not the only state in the country that, as Colin put it, feels “on this cusp of being able to reach out — not only to see a 50% cut in emissions but 100%. It’s doable, it’s within reach.” Pennsylvania and Michigan voters will also have opportunities to elect politicians who will advance climate legislation, and voters in Washington, California, and New York can defend their states’ progress. But it’s Arizona where the stakes seem especially immediate — and high. “It’s supposed to be 96 [degrees Fahrenheit] here today,” Conlin marveled when we spoke this week, at the end of October.
I could hear the weariness in the voices of the organizers I spoke to after a long, hard-fought season; candidates are set to make their final pitches to voters next week. Early-voting ballots are already in the mail or in hand. The CCL has just one final day of canvassing planned, on November 2. The polls will close three days later, at 7 p.m. local time, and then the count will begin.
Tesla got to thump its chest this week. In a Wednesday earnings call with investors, CEO Elon Musk and company shared better-than-expected sales and financial numbers for the third quarter of 2024. That good news caused the electric vehicle-maker’s stock to rebound following what had been a disappointing sales year so far, with the slump compounded by a tepid reaction to the “We, Robot” event earlier in October, when Tesla debuted its autonomous Cybercab.
A few important factors underlie Tesla’s big rebound: Manufacturing costs fell, the refreshed Model 3 is doing well, and the Cybertruck has begun to sell in big enough numbers to help the company’s bottom line. Then there was this line from Musk’s presentation: “Preparations remain underway for our offering of new vehicles – including more affordable models – which we will begin launching in the first half of 2025.”
You might think that sentence suggests the long-rumored $25,000 Tesla is, at last, right around the corner. But when pressed by an investor whether the company would indeed build a "$25,000 non-robotaxi regular car model," Musk called the idea “pointless.” "It would be silly. It would be completely at odds with what we believe," he continued, saying that it’s “blindingly obvious” autonomy is the future.
It’s beginning to look like the idea of a little human-driven Tesla that costs as much as a Toyota Corolla will forever be a fantasy. One could argue, though, it has already done its job. The promise of the “Model 2,” perpetually dangled in front of the world as something just a few years away, enticed many people — including, crucially, investors — to believe Musk would extend his dominance of the EV market and truly conquer the car industry by offering an entry-level electric car for the masses. But if that ever was the plan, it isn’t anymore.
Tesla has always played fast and loose with deadlines and promises. It finally launched the Model 3 after years of promising the $35,000 Tesla, though obtaining the base version of the car at that price was a major challenge. In fact, most Model 3s that sold cost well into the $40,000s, if not more. The cheapest one you can order today starts at $43,000 before incentives.
The even smaller Tesla has been the topic of long-running rumors, buoyed by signals from the mothership. In 2022, Musk simply had “too much on his plate” to work on the car. In 2023, when Tesla finally began to sell a new vehicle, it was not a cheap compact but the Cybertruck. Musk then reportedly tabled the cheap Tesla indefinitely.
That didn’t stop the optimism. In the leadup to this week’s earnings call, one major analyst said it was the potential $25,000 EV, not the Cybercab or any of Tesla’s future-looking autonomous projects, that would drive the company’s success (and stock price) in the short term. After all, an EV with that MSRP could have a true cost under $20,000 after tax credits. At that point, it would undercut even entry-level gas cars in the U.S.
During the call, while scoffing at the idea of a small Tesla for carbon-based drivers, Musk pointed out that the Cybercab is technically a $25,000 car after tax breaks (though, this is the same man who, while throwing his weight behind the Trump campaign, has said that ending the EV tax credit would benefit Tesla). It’s just one that happens to have no steering wheel and no pedals. Teslaraticoncluded that the company’s promise of more affordable cars to come in the beginning of next year refers to lowering the prices of Tesla’s current offerings, not any plans to debut something new and different.
The EV market has changed a lot since the dawn of this decade, when Tesla rolled out the Model Y and cemented its grip on the industry. The rise of the super-cheap Chinese EV in particular spooked not only Western governments, but also American car companies that had dreams of competing for the lower end of the market. Combine that with Musk’s insistence that Tesla remain a lean, innovative firm rather than maturing into a boring EV-maker and you arrive at this point, with Musk going all in on trying to win the race for the true self-driving car instead of diversifying the kinds of vehicles it’s actually selling today.
History could prove him right. Still, that’s cold comfort for anyone who’d been hoping for a small, cheap EV they could drive themselves. It’s certainly possible to envision the Cybercab adapted for human drivers, but Musk is adamant that won’t happen. So an affordable, normal EV will have to come from elsewhere.
And it might. Despite gloomy headlines about a supposed slump, EV sales in America are steadily rising. At the less expensive end of the market, Chevy has begun selling the base-level version of the Equinox EV at the promised $35,000, which could fall under $30,000 with tax breaks. The Chevy Bolt should be even cheaper than that when it returns for the 2026 model year. Detroit has a whole lot to figure out in the coming years about how to build electric vehicles profitably, but, at the very least, the legacy carmakers might actually offer you an affordable EV — with a steering wheel.