援引Electrek消息人士。
It says:
The project, codenamed NV9, has been put on hold, and Tesla has focused its resources on self-driving taxis.
This is the second time that there has been related news recently, before Reuters exposed the same news, Tesla founder Elon Musk had responded to the news, responding that Reuters lied and said that the news was fake, but now that a source has exposed the same topic, what will be the final result?
Sources said that Musk expressed support for the NV9 project and the expansion of the production line for cheap models at the Austin, Texas conference in December 2023, but the project has been completely withdrawn recently, and even some employees have been laid off. Recently, Tesla has clearly issued a letter to all employees saying that it will lay off 10% of its global workforce, so such news is inevitably a little confusing.
Empathy, if you were Musk, how would you choose?
If you can put yourself in the other way, you might also stop the cheap car business, because Tesla's creation of cheap cars will make the brand positioning very blurred. In the early stage, Tesla built high-end models, and the Model S/X in ordinary passenger cars were also high-end cars, and Tesla car users in this stage had a very clear understanding of the brand;
The current Tesla brand value is equivalent to that of first-line luxury brands such as BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Audi in the perception of users in the C-end market, and it is a special "high-end brand of science and technology". Cheap cars will bring more orders to Tesla, but it is also possible to ruin the brand in the long run, of course, this is only a personal understanding.
Conversely, focusing on the robotaxi program can avoid damage to the Tesla brand.
The reason is that its research and development is not an ordinary taxi, but a taxi with self-driving capabilities, automatic driving at this stage is still a concept premium ability, is regarded as the existence of cutting-edge technology in the automotive field, so creating self-driving taxis is beneficial for Tesla, the point is that these cars can be independent as a brand or series, will not be associated with the main brand of Tesla, and will not cause emotional impact on Tesla car users.
Another way of thinking, the price of cheap cars is low, and if you want to ensure a large enough profit per car, you need to have a strong cost control ability.
To control costs, we need to rely on a complete industrial chain, to put it bluntly, we can purchase low-cost motors, batteries and electronic controls, but Tesla does not have such a reliance in its home market, and Tesla, as an American automaker, cannot import too many vehicle parts, that is, it cannot rely on the automobile industry chain of other countries, even if it is more mature. Therefore, even if Tesla makes cheap electric vehicles, it is difficult to show competitiveness, and with China-made electric vehicles as a reference, it can make Tesla's cheap models lose their competitiveness through price wars at any time.
So there's really no need for Tesla to build cheap models, and it's possible that these news are true.
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