I believe he thinks so. Here is my take…Call me skeptical, but I don’t believe him.
Target next year means maybe 2026.
Elon is competitive and many other cars will beat the 2020 specs by then. He’s not going to achieve any manufacturing scale from any parts not repurposed in other cars, so borrowing from SpaceX is one of his few competitive advantages.
Since Tesla doesn’t spend much on marketing and PR, Tesla can afford to lose some money in fixed and variable cost making it, but the more they lose in variable cost, the fewer they will want to build. Consequently Tesla could build a money losing exotic variant and a break even normal one. Or they could just do a limited production run.
Here is some speculation:
Reused
carbon ceramic brakes
Motors: Plaid rear, maybe re-geared. Maybe two PM motors in front.
Batteries: probably the new Cybertruck individual cells.
Electrical: 48v. Automotive Ethernet rather than CANBus. Likely some pure 48v parts that weren’t available in time for Cybertruck. (Window motors?)
Body: Aluminum? Building carbon fiber bodies seems excessive.
Drive by wire
Tires: Probably similar sizes and materials for sub 170mph speed performance. Probably whatever has reasonable wear that can be rated for 250mph for the high performance. Not a lot of choices on the latter.
Octovalve: might need to be modified to include the heavy thermal loads of the compressed air system.
New exclusive
Battery packaging: Maybe the double stacked 200kWh in the high end version.
SpaceX: To me this is the biggest unknown. Jets for active downforce ? Or for thrust? Or both? Intake air fan for active downforce?
New but maybe leveragable:
Wheel lugs: F1 style. Likely staggered. (Will F1 style allow for square with rear spacers? Do buyers of this car even care about winter tires or tire wear?)
Unknown
Exotic glass?
Still portrait screen?
Separate heavy GT and light track model?
Unlikely
Megacasting: I just assume that’s not practical for low volumes, even if a press is already in use for something else on site.
Last edited: