Tesla Model Q: Are the rumors about the new, affordable Tesla true?

New Teslas are coming, and one will be really affordable. Credit: Smith Collection/Gado / Getty Images

Will Tesla's new, affordable electric vehicle be called Tesla Model Q? Don't hold your breath for the name, but a cheaper Tesla is, apparently, coming.

A Deutsche Bank report mentions the new model and claims the car will launch in the first half of 2025, with a starting price under $30,000.

According to GlobalChinaEV, Travis Axelrod (Teslaa's Head of Investor Relations) talked about the vehicle with Deutsche Bank. The report claims that the car – codenamed "Redwood" – will be 15 percent smaller and 30 percent lighter than Tesla's Model 3, and that it will cost Tesla about half as much to manufacture.

The report also mentions two battery configurations for the car (53kWh and 75kWh), as well as single- and dual-motor variants.

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Take these details with a grain of salt. The Wall Street Journal's Becky Peterson claims she saw a copy of the Deutsche Bank report. She does confirm that Axelrod discussed the new Tesla with Deutsche Bank (Model Q seems to be Deutsche Bank's name for the car, not Tesla's). She also claims that the new car will be built on Tesla's existing production lines, and that it will cost less than $30,000 with subsidies (meaning that the actual starting price would be $37,499).

But Peterson says that the report does not contain any details about the car's size, cost, or that it will built on Redwood, which is Tesla's internal code name for a mass market vehicle built on a new platform which was paused by Musk earlier in 2024.

When laid out like this, the report doesn't really bring much new to the table, given that Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently said a cheaper Tesla is coming in the first half of 2025, without revealing any additional details. Musk also specifically said that a non-Robotaxi Tesla car that costs $25,000 will not happen.

Where does all this leave us? Well, mostly where we were before. Despite Musk's own AI Grok already claiming that Tesla has "announced the upcoming launch of the Model Q," nothing new has been officially announced. Yes, a more affordable Tesla seems to be coming next year, but it's unclear whether it'll be an entirely new model or just a cheaper Model 3.

Stan is a Senior Editor at Mashable, where he has worked since 2007. He's got more battery-powered gadgets and band t-shirts than you. He writes about the next groundbreaking thing. Typically, this is a phone, a coin, or a car. His ultimate goal is to know something about everything.