It looks like 2025 will be the year electric car prices will drop , as car companies begin to ramp up production of cheaper EV's. By mid-2025 at least three budget models are due and Tesla will reportedly start building a much cheaper model.
The new Tesla is expected to sell for about €25,000.
Talk of a budget Tesla has been around since about 2020, but now the company has asked suppliers to tender for the manufacture of what is described as a "mass-market compact crossover".
Automotive News Europe reports that the project has been codenamed "Redwood" and the car is due to go into production by mid-2025, first in Texas and then in Berlin.
ANE says Elon Musk told a recent shareholders meeting that both the design and manufacturing techniques for the new car are "head and shoulders above anything that is present in the (motor) industry".
With Volkswagen, Dacia, Renault and Citroen - among other manufacturers - set to enter this budget-EV race around the same time or even before, potential buyers may further stall the electric car market as they wait for lower prices, longer ranges and a better public charging network.
Sales of electric cars in Europe fell at the end of last year - for the first time in 17 months - and are down 3.8 per cent. The cost of these cars has been cited by many as a deterrent in their choice of new car.
Some of these budget cars will, however, be aimed at urban drivers and will have smaller battery capacities.
In the meantime, Chinese manufacturers continue to exert pressure on European and American car companies. BYD (Build Your Dreams) has already overtaken Tesla in terms of sales volume, despite Tesla’s price cuts across its range, and price tariffs on Chinese imports are being mooted in both Europe and the United States, such is the perceived threat.
Professor Stefan Brazil, director of Germany’s Centre of Automotive Management, says entry-level EV’s need to cost around the same as petrol or diesel models and that is likely to happen next year.
"Only from 2025 and subsequent years will we see an increased range of cost-effective and sufficiently competitive e-cars like the Tesla compact model, Renault Twingo (soon to be called the Legend), and the VW ID.2, which significantly accelerate the market ramp-up," Bratzel is quoted as saying in a recent Forbes magazine report.
