Tesla launching cheaper models early as it previews its ride-hailing service UI

While Tesla says in the quarterly earnings presentation that it will "accelerate the launch of new models ahead of our previously communicated start of production in the second half of 2025," Elon Musk remained rather vague about it in the conference call with investors afterward.

"These new vehicles, including more affordable models, will utilize aspects of the next generation platform as well as aspects of our current platforms, and will be able to be produced on the same manufacturing lines as our current vehicle line-up," tipped Tesla.

When pressed whether those cheaper Teslas include facelifts like the Model 3 Highland, Elon Musk remained mum. He said that this is all there is to say on the matter right now, and more will be shared when Tesla announces the "purpose-built" Robotaxi on August 8.

After all, Tesla is going to launch a Model Y Juniper refresh next year, and it reportedly plans to make it cheaper by applying lessons learned from the Robotaxi production on Tesla's next generation low-cost production platform.

Besides the mysterious "more affordable" models, Tesla remained vague on its vehicle autonomy and Robotaxi plans, too. It spent most of the earnings call talking about the AI data that will help FSD convince regulators that it is safer than human driving, rather than have some concrete actions to make the Robotaxi hit public roads.

The only answer Elon Musk gave was that there are other companies with autonomous vehicles out there already, so it shouldn't be too hard for a Robotaxi to get approved when regulators see the FSD data it is now amassing.

That data, however, will be used to launch a ride-hailing Cybercab service of sorts, he inferred, by polishing a future iteration of its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system.

Elon Musk still envisions that Tesla car owners will be able to rent them out like an Airbnb when they don't use them, and summon them at will when they need them:

You don't even think about it. Just like an elevator, it takes you to your floor. That's it. Don't think about how the elevator is working or anything like that. And something I should clarify is that Tesla will be operating the fleet. So you can think of like how Tesla, think of it’s like some combination of Airbnb and Uber, meaning that there will be some number of cars that Tesla owns itself and operates in the fleet. There will be some number of cars and then there'll be a bunch of cars where they're owned by the end user. That end user can add or subtract their car to the fleet whenever they want, and they can decide if they want to only let the car be used by friends and family or only by 5-star users or by anyone at any time they could have the car come back to them and be exclusively theirs, like an Airbnb.

Tesla even made an app interface mockup to demonstrate how its ride-hailing service may work, but this will again hinge on regulatory approval and many more miles of FSD data.

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