Elon Musk is hinting at Tesla making bigger electric cars, but you shouldn’t hold your breath as it’s not the first time he said that.
In the last few hours, Musk responded to two fans on X, asking Tesla to build bigger vehicles to support larger families.
Musk often promotes the idea of having bigger families as he is afraid of declining populations due to low birth rates in some countries.
With the first one, the CEO responded with a simple “OK,” and with the other, he elaborated a bit more by referencing the recently unveiled Tesla Robovan and “some other things”:
Musk appears to be hinting at Tesla’s work on a bigger electric vehicle that has yet to be unveiled.
While interesting, it’s hard to give too much weight to the comment, considering Musk claimed that Tesla has been working on a higher passenger capacity vehicle for years.
A “high passenger-density urban transport” vehicle has been in Tesla’s official product roadmap since 2016 and has yet to be unveiled, unless you count the Robovan unveiled last month, but that’s completely attached to Tesla’s self-driving effort as the vehicle has no steering wheel or pedals.
As part of Tesla’s shift toward autonomous driving, the automaker has pulled back plans for several new electric vehicle programs in favor of those without any driver inputs, like Cybercab and Robotvan.
Musk has also discussed the possibility of Tesla making an electric van on several occasions in the last few years.
Tesla is expected to soon unveil two new vehicles to be launch next year, but those are based on the Model 3 and Model Y and therefore, they aren’t likely to be bigger vehicles.
Electrek’s Take
Like most things Elon says lately, it goes in my “I’ll believe it when I see it” folder.
That said, I think an electric van that can be configured for cargo, camper, or passenger, would make a ton of sense in Tesla’s vehicle lineup.
Of course, it’s harder to get the greenlight for a vehicle program like that if your CEO is perpetually convinced that the company is on the verge of achieving self-driving and making steering wheels obsolete.
I’m more of the opinion that Tesla should have played it more careful and continue working on growing its human-driveable EV lineup while working on self-driving.
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