I doubt it although clearly predicting what Tesla is going to do in relationship to prices seems like a crapshoot. In any case it makes little sense that they're doing this entire Highland project to significantly streamline manufacturing, the point of which is to materially cut costs, so that they can raise prices. It's much more likely that they are trying to drive increased demand through these efficiencies, allowing a profit margin that is still decent on a reduced price car that is easier to make.
Needless to say, but important to consider, no one is in a position to follow them down this particular trajectory. Everybody else is losing money except for byd on their electric vehicle lines. And byd is not making anything like $9,000 a unit as far as we know.
Any other storyline it seems to me goes against Tesla memes and recent trends. That of course is the whole idea behind the gigacastings, the structural battery pack, a new motor without expensive rare earth metals, etc etc etc. Tesla is showing the entire industry that they not only know how to make vehicles with slightly more range and slightly better performance at almost any given price point, but they are driving manufacturing efficiencies and improvements at a scary rate. Or at least it's scary from the standpoint of the Legacy automakers having any chance at all to catch Tesla. Ford is hemorrhaging money on the Mach e, GM just discontinued their biggest seller and can't make more than two Hummers in the last quarter and everybody else is struggling to scale up.
Again in that context I think Tesla sees an opportunity to blow everybody out of the water by cutting the price through streamlined Manufacturing on their two big sellers. Don't see anything that's going to materially reverse that overall trend. Rather than the competition coming for Tesla I think bankruptcy is coming to the competition. Which may not be necessarily a great thing for the industry in the long term, as competition is certainly good for just about everybody, but that's what it looks like.