Elon Musk teases Tesla’s Model Y, car names will spell out ‘S3XY’

Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk teased the new Model Y, an all-electric compact SUV, saying he’s really excited about the car and it should hit the roads in 2019. With the Model Y launch, the cars built by Tesla will spell out ‘S3XY.’

Talking at the Annual Shareholders Meeting, Elon Musk shared a picture of the Model Y, hinting at some design changes and saying it will be more popular than the Model 3.

“I’m really excited about Model Y. There’s been some criticism, that we should do it derived from the Model 3 platform, but I think we actually made a mistake in trying to derive the Model X from the Model S platform. It would have been better to just design an SUV the way an SUV should be designed, design a sedan the way a sedan should be designed. Also there are a number of really major manufacturing improvements that can be done that allow us to build a car in a way that a car has never been built before. We’re aiming for the Model Y to hit the roads in 2019 approximately. And probably the demand for the Model Y will exceed the demand for the Model 3,” Musk said.

He added that he expects a new plant to be built for the Model Y, as the Fremont factory can’t handle extra production. The Model Y will be built in a new Gigafactory, but Musk says they still have to figure out the exact location of the factory. Tesla’s CEO said the existing Gigafactory will supply the battery pack and drivetrains and motor and power electronics for the Model Y.

“There’s a few other things that I haven’t mentioned, I recommend showing up for the semi-truck unveiling, maybe there’s a little more than we’re saying here,” Musk added.

Elon Musk also talked about the company’s semi truck, saying it’s being built with the help of organisations involved in heavy duty trucking.

“he semi-truck we’re going to unveil at the end of September and I think that’s very exciting. A lot of people don’t think you can do a heavy-duty long-range truck that’s electric but we’re confident that this can be done. So we’ll be showing off a working prototype. We’ve shown it to a number of organisations that buy heavy-duty trucking and they all love it, they just want to know how many can they buy and how soon. We’re involving them in the design process. So the biggest customers of the heavy-duty Tesla semi are helping ensure that it is specified to their needs. So it’s not a mystery, they already know that it’s going to meet their needs because they already told us what those needs are. So it’s really going to be just a question of scaling volume to make as many as we can,” Elon Musk said.

Answering a question about the Model 3, Elon Musk said if a customer places a $1,000 deposit for the car now the vehicle will be delivered probably only at the end of next year.