Tesla Model Y: Elon Musk’s fifth electric car is a compact SUV

The first thing that struck me about Tesla’s new Model Y when it was unveiled onstage in Los Angeles on Thursday night was how much it looks like the Model 3. A few minutes later, when I got in for a quick ride, the similarities were undeniable.

As we zipped down and back on Jack Northrop Avenue, just outside the fences that surround Tesla’s design studio and SpaceX’s headquarters, it was hard at times to remember that I was in the front seat of a brand-new car that won’t enter production until 2020. Aside from a slightly higher ride height and marginally improved visibility, I might as well have been in Tesla’s first mass-market electric car, the Model 3.

Elon Musk took the stage at the Tesla Design Studio outside Los Angeles on Thursday evening to unveil the company’s fifth production car: a compact SUV called the Model Y.

Musk padded the event with a walk down memory lane, spending over 40 minutes highlighting Tesla’s humble beginnings and its struggles to achieve mass production of its vehicles, before revealing the car.

Tesla is now taking preorders on its website for its newly unveiled Model Y, an all-electric crossover SUV and the company’s fifth electric car. The company unveiled the Model Y at an event outside Los Angeles Thursday evening.

The long range Model Y will come first in the fall of 2020, and will have a range of 300 miles, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said. Tesla will also sell an all-wheel-drive dual motor version for $51,000, and a performance version for $60,000— both of which will also be available in fall 2020. The cheaper, standard range version with a range of 230 miles won’t be available until 2021, Musk said, and will sell for $39,000.

This is the Tesla Model Y, the electric carmaker’s new compact SUV, which is due out in 2020. Elon Musk took to the stage at Tesla’s design studio outside Los Angeles Thursday night to the usual rapturous cheering from the automaker’s loyal fanbase. But when he finally unveiled the car — after a trip down memory lane and a recounting of Tesla’s inarguably impressive history — the reaction was slightly less enthusiastic than it was three years prior when the Model 3 sedan was revealed. And that’s because we’ve seen this car before: the Model Y is almost exactly like the Model 3, just a little bigger.

The specs weren’t much of a surprise either: the long-range Model Y has a range of 300 miles and seating for seven. A performance version of the vehicle is capable of sprinting from 0 to 60 mph in 3.5 seconds. It’s Musk’s fifth car ever to hit the road, and it’s the company’s second attempt at a mass-market electric vehicle.

On Thursday evening, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is taking the stage to unveil the Model Y, an all-electric compact SUV and the automaker’s fifth vehicle since its founding in 2003. And unless you are one of the lucky few to score an invite to the exclusive event, chances are you’re like us, stuck at home and wondering how to watch the party. Well, we’ve got you covered.

Like past Tesla events, a live stream will be available on Tesla’s website, now also available in the YouTube embed at the top of this post. There doesn’t seem to be an alternative official stream. The event will be at 8PM PT (11PM ET). So as usual with Tesla events, it’s going to be a late night for the company’s fans on the East Coast. 

After almost four years in the making, Tesla will finally reveal the Model Y compact SUV tonight at an event in Los Angeles. While we still haven’t seen a full picture of the new electric car, Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have spent the last few years, months, and days leading up to the unveiling sketching out a decent outline of what to expect.

Broadly speaking, the Model Y will be a crucial car for Tesla that presents the company with a huge opportunity. Simply put, SUVs are selling like hotcakes these days. They currently account for about 49 percent of the new car market in the United States, according to JD Power, and more than half of customers who bought a vehicle last year in the $30,000 to $50,000 price range purchased an SUV.

Elon Musk often says that the key to Tesla’s success is how people talk about the company. “Great word-of-mouth is why Model 3 is the best-selling electric car, despite no advertising or paid endorsements,” he wrote in September 2018. The company repeatedly admits this, too. In its most recent 10-K filing with the SEC, Tesla said word of mouth, along with media coverage “have been the primary drivers of our vehicle sales leads,” which is how and why the company eschews traditional advertising.

But Tesla is still coming off a volatile 2018, and it has recently made changes in the name of cost-cutting that put this basic tenet of the company in some jeopardy. With Tesla closing many of its stores and shifting sales to an online-only model, the company will also be more reliant on good word of mouth than ever before. If any damage to its reputation has been done, it might become obvious soon because Tesla is about to reveal — and potentially start taking preorders for — its second mass-market car on Thursday: the Model Y compact SUV.

Tesla will unveil its Model Y crossover SUV on March 14th during an event at the company’s design studio in Los Angeles, CEO Elon Musk announced Sunday. The new electric car will be Tesla’s fifth since the company was founded in 2003.

The Model Y will share about 75 percent of its parts with the Model 3, which is currently Tesla’s most affordable car. Musk said the Model Y will be about 10 percent bigger, cost about 10 percent more, and will have slightly less range than the Model 3. The Model Y won’t have the “Falcon Wing” doors that are found on Tesla’s bigger SUV, the Model X. (Musk had previously hinted that it might.)

Tesla is set to unveil the Model Y, its fifth car, in March of 2019. It’s expected to be a crossover SUV that’s smaller than the Model X, and will share lots of the Model 3’s underlying tech. With SUV sales through the roof in the United States, it’s likely to be a hit. And with a sticker price that will likely resemble the Model 3’s, the Model Y will launch in the US with very little direct competition when you consider the premium attached to the electric SUVs from Jaguar, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, and Porsche.

That’s not the case in China, however, a point underscored this week by two new vehicle announcements.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said Wednesday that he recently approved the final prototype of the Model Y, signaling that the forthcoming all-electric crossover SUV is far enough along in development to go into production. Approval aside, though, he said full volume production still isn’t slated to happen until 2020, which has been the target for a while now.

“We’ve made significant progress on the Model Y,” Musk said in an uncharacteristically subdued call with investors and analysts, following news of the company’s first profitable quarter in two years. The CEO has previously teased a March 2019 reveal of the SUV.

Elon Musk said that Tesla’s forthcoming electric crossover vehicle, the Model Y, will be a “manufacturing revolution,” even though the automaker is still struggling to get its mass-market Model 3 out of the door and into customers’ driveways. In an earnings call on Wednesday, Musk said that Tesla has yet to spend any capital expenditures on the Model Y, but it was spending some cash on early product designs.

The vehicle’s real impact will be in the manufacturing process, where Musk says he wants to avoid the pain he’s currently experiencing with Model 3 production. “I think the Model Y is going to be a manufacturing revolution,” he said, adding that the Model Y will be “incredible from a manufacturing standpoint.”

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said today the forthcoming Model Y electric crossover vehicle will be built on a similar architecture to the recently released Model 3, in an effort to bring the car to market sooner. The news, announced in an earnings call Wednesday, is a reversal from several months ago, in which Musk claimed the all-electric compact SUV would be “completely different” from anything Tesla has produced before.

“Upon the council of my executive team to reel me back from the cliffs of insanity, the Model Y will, in fact, be using substantial carry over from Model 3 in order to bring it to market faster,” Musk said on the call.

Little is known about Tesla’s Model Y electric crossover vehicle, but in an earnings call Wednesday, CEO Elon Musk gave us a few tantalizing new details.

The Model Y, an all-electric compact SUV, is expected to start production in 2020, but could hit the assembly line as soon as late 2019, Musk said. And contrary to previous assumptions, the Model Y will be built on a “completely different” platform from the upcoming mass-market Model 3.