Tesla Model Y: Elon Musk Reveals Plans For Compact SUV

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has revealed some details about the company’s upcoming compact SUV called Model Y. The business magnate and inventor shared that the new car is going to be simpler to manufacture than the delayed Model 3.

During the company’s Q4 earnings call Wednesday, Musk grabbed the opportunity to talk about Tesla’s plans for Model Y. He revealed that Tesla is planning to make capital investments on the new model sometime in the second half of this year. “We are going to make some capital investments towards the end of this year related to Model Y. I don’t want to jump the gun on those, but I think we’ve got a good plan.”

After admitting that he is pretty excited for the designing process of Model Y, Musk shared that they are taking what they learned from the production of Model 3 and use such lessons in the development of Model Y. He maintained that Model Y will be created with efficiency and rapid production in mind. He even gushed that the upcoming SUV will be easier to manufacture than Model 3, as per Teslarati.

“I’m pretty excited about how we’re designing Model Y,” Musk said. “It’s really taking a lot of lessons learned from Model 3 and saying how do we design something to be easy to manufacture instead of how to manufacture or difficult really,” he added.

Musk was tight-lipped on the specifics of Tesla’s plans for Model Y. However, he did say that more information about the all-electric SUV will likely be provided in the third or fourth quarter. This will include details on where Model Y would be manufactured. “We want to wait probably three to six months before announcing any definitive plans on production location and the details associated with that,” Musk said.

It should be noted that Musk already mentioned in the past that Model Y will commence production in 2020 and the compact EV will be targeted at the Chinese market and other countries at launch. “It’s sort of a rough target of start of production in about three years and it would be serving the China market and perhaps some other countries in the region and that’s really the intent,” the CEO said during Tesla’s Q3 earnings call last year.

According to CNBC, Tesla’s Model Y is the company’s first crossover vehicle and it’s first entry to a market segment that’s growing rapidly in the U.S. Thus far, Tesla has two sedans and one sports utility vehicle, Model X. Tesla expects Model Y to do well in the American market because of how U.S. consumers are shifting toward SUVs and trucks at the present time.