The Tesla Model Q is rumored to launch in the first part of 2025.
Independent Premium
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
The Independent’s Electric Vehicles Channel is sponsored by E.ON Next.
A really small and affordable Tesla (cheaper even than the best-selling Model 3) has been the great will of the automobile industry for years.
The consensus is that such a car would sell like hot cakes in Europe, where smaller cars are preferred over the types of large SUVs and pickup trucks favored in Tesla’s US market.
Previously known as the Model 2, but more recently called the Model Q, a compact Tesla can cost just under £30,000, which would bring the generation of top-tier electric vehicles to the masses, adding Tesla’s Supercharger network.
Now, a while after Tesla boss Elon Musk said a Model 2 around £25,000 would be “useless”, it looks like a small Tesla is back in play.
The Model Q is still in its early stages at the time of writing, in late 2024, but we expect to hear a lot more about the new Tesla in the coming months. As such, this article will be updated as new news emerges and the hypothesis about the Q style is revealed.
Perhaps the biggest surprise here is that Tesla reportedly plans to launch the Model Q during the first half of 2025. That is according to an investor meeting held between Tesla and Deutsche Bank.
In the presence of Travis Axelrod, Tesla’s head of investor relations, the late 2024 meeting described as the bank’s Autonomous Driving Day and referenced a new Tesla called the Model Q.
According to Wall Street Journal reporter Becky Peterson, who received a briefing from Deutsche Bank prepared after the meeting, the bank said that the so-called Q style “will be launched in the first part of 2025. “
This will turn out very soon, given that we have not yet seen any Tesla cars inspected in public. But Tesla tends to paint on a different release cycle than the rest of the industry, preferring to reveal cars that appear to be in production condition and open order books some time, or even several years, before the actual arrival of the vehicles. cars. . first visiting cars.
Get your electric vehicle and charger in one place.
Get your EV tariff and charger in one place.
A new car launching in the first half of 2025 could still be a couple of years away from production reality, but the prospect of a new, cheaper and smaller Tesla is an exciting one nonetheless – and one that will no doubt give the rest of the EV industry sleepless nights.
The Deutsche Bank report also touched on the potential value of the new little Tesla. Peterson quoted the bank as saying that Model Q “will charge less than $30,000 with subsidies, or $37,499 if Trump cancels the IRA tax credit. “
That works out at about £24,000, before accounting for tax, well below the £39,990 starting price of the Tesla Model 3.
A sticker worth less than $30,000 has also been placed on the Tesla Cybercab, a two-seat autonomous vehicle unveiled in October 2024 and said to be able to operate as a driverless taxi until 2026. It’s unclear for now. whether that’s what a person without their own self-driving car would pay, or whether that’s what Cybercab would charge if a taxi company bought a giant fleet of them. Cybercab and Model Q will most likely share components, and potentially even their entire chassis and drivetrain, to keep prices low.
As with Tesla, everything we know so far about the Cybercab and Model Q leaves us with more questions than answers.
Another tantalising prospect for a cut-price Tesla is what the monthly payments might look like. It’s often possible to pick up a new, base spec Model 3 for £299 a month (plus a deposit of about £3,500), which suggests a circa-£199 Tesla Model Q might just be possible.
As with many other electric cars, a choice of two battery sizes is likely for the Model Q. The latest rumours suggest those options will be 53 kWh and 75 kWh, and that the larger will have a maximum claimed range of 300 miles.
This is only just behind the range of the entry-level Model 3, at 318 miles, but well short of the long-range Model 3, which has a claimed range of some 436 miles, making it one of the longest-range EVs available today.
Another likelihood is that the Model Q will be offered with one- and two-motor configurations, with the latter having more power. It’s also a given that the car will have a very simple interior, lacking a driver instrument display and physical switchgear. Instead, and just like the Model 3 and soon-to-be-updated Model Y, the Model Q is expected to have a large touchscreen for controlling everything from the media and navigation to the climate control and all vehicle settings.
After years of rumour and speculation – plus several comments from Tesla and Elon Musk himself about a cut-price Tesla – the aforementioned Deutsche Bank report is the latest news we have on the Tesla Model Q / Model 2.
There will undoubtedly be more to come from the cheapest, smallest Tesla yet, and we’d be very surprised if a car below the Model 3 never appears. Given how popular cars like the Mini Cooper E are in Europe and the UK – and how popular the new Renault 5 E-tech will undoubtedly be – we believe it would make perfect sense for Tesla to launch a smaller car, even if its size means it doesn’t actually come to the US at all.
For now, we’re waiting for the rumored launch of the Model Q in mid-2025. We’ll be sure to update this article when new data on Tesla’s smallest car is revealed.
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged inPlease refresh your browser to be logged in