Tesla Says New Vehicles, Including 'Affordable' Models, Are Coming. Musk Has Few Details (Updated)

[April 23, 6:07 PM Eastern: This story has been updated with details from Tesla's earnings call.]

Lately, it's been a fair question whether Tesla CEO Elon Musk remembers he's running a car company—or if he even wants to. Much to the chagrin of investors, owners and fans everywhere, word on the street lately is that Tesla's big focus is robots, AI and autonomously-driven robotaxis instead of a supposedly $25,000 EV. All of that comes at a time when Tesla's car lineup is older than ever, and losing ground to new electric competitors.

But Tesla's Q1 2024 financial report, which was released today ahead of its quarterly earnings call, seems to affirm that some new vehicles are indeed coming soon—including "more affordable" models. 

Then again, the CEO himself had little to say about any of these models, preferring to opine about AI, the robotaxi service, the Optimus robot and autonomous driving instead. 

"We have updated our future vehicle line-up to accelerate the launch of new models ahead of our previously communicated start of production in the second half of 2025," the report said. "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." 

"So we expect it to be more like early 2025, if not late this year," Musk said on the earnings call. "It's not contingent on any new factory or massive new production line. It'll be made on our current production lines much more efficiently. And we think this should allow us to get to over 3 million vehicles of capacity." In 2023, Tesla produced about 1.8 million vehicles. 

Beyond that, Musk didn't seem at all interested in elaborating on an actual product roadmap. At several points during Tuesday evening's call, he either demurred or waved off questions about what was coming next—including when one analyst asked if "new products" meant updates like the Highland Model 3, or entirely new cars.

Instead, Musk wanted to talk not about how Tesla is going to fend off Hyundai or Nissan, but how it's going to deploy a network of autonomous taxis