Tesla CEO Elon Musk teased two new electric vehicles Tuesday at the automaker’s 2023 annual shareholder’s meeting. The billionaire executive even claimed that Tesla is already in the process of building a new product.
“I just want to emphasize that we are actually building a new product,” said Musk. “We are actually designing a new product. We’re not sitting on our hands here.”
Musk went on to say that there are two new products in the pipeline, and that “both the design of the products and the manufacturing techniques are head and shoulders above anything else that is present in the industry.”
As the CEO spoke, a rendered image of a vehicle silhouette appeared on the screen behind him, giving the audience a teaser of one of the vehicles. It’s possible that vehicle might be the $25,000 hatchback that Musk mentioned back in 2020 during the company’s battery day. He said this meeting wasn’t the place to make a new product announcement, and that there would be a proper product launch eventually.
Musk wasn’t clear on stage what he meant by “building” the vehicle. It’s likely that a prototype is being built, rather than a production volume vehicle.
Screenshot from Tesla Investor Day 2023 presentation teasing two new vehicles. Image Credit: Tesla/Screenshot
Tesla previously teased two new models at its Investor Day in March, displaying a photo with Tesla’s entire lineup and two unveiled car outlines. One of the vehicles looked to be the size of a van and the other the size of a sedan or hatchback. Both are expected to be more affordable vehicles that sell at much higher volumes.
“Elon’s guess is that we’ll probably make in excess of 5 million units per year of these two models combined,” said Musk.
During Investor Day, Tesla also confirmed plans to build a gigafactory in Mexico, which is where many have speculated that production of the hatchback, commonly referred to as the “Model 2” by Tesla fans, will be built.
There has been some speculation that the second vehicle Musk teased will be the robotaxi he has referred to in the past. An audience member asked Musk for an update on Teslas being used for ride-share, and Musk responded that ride-share “will not really be relevant in the self-driving world.”
The executive went on to say that Tesla is getting close to achieving full self-driving, something Musk has claimed multiple times over the past several years.
During the shareholder meeting, Tesla also announced that former CTO JB Straubel will return to the automaker’s board and that the company aims to try some traditional advertising methods to promote new features.