Tesla Keeps Promising an Affordable EV. It’s Most Loyal Fans Are Finally Giving Up Hope

For almost two decades, Elon Musk has promised that Tesla would sell an affordable electric car. It was the final piece of his so-called “secret master plan”—build something expensive, use the profits to build something cheaper, and eventually make an EV that anyone could buy.

Back in 2020, Musk stood on stage at Tesla’s Battery Day and said the company would build a $25,000 car “about three years from now.” Not only that, but this mythical car would be fully autonomous and powered by Tesla’s next-generation battery technology. Tesla was going to sell you a car that was not only inexpensive and able to drive itself, but that you’d be able to rent out when you weren’t using it.

That was five years ago, and it still hasn’t happened. Now, even Tesla’s most loyal fans are starting to lose patience.

Since then, that car has been delayed, redefined, or quietly ignored—depending on which day you catch Musk on X. At one point, he dismissed the idea altogether, saying it didn’t make sense to build a $25,000 car with a human driver. More recently, he’s shifted his focus to the so-called “Cybercab,” a self-driving robotaxi that doesn’t actually exist yet either. The problem is that a lot of people are still waiting for what they were promised.

That’s what made the company special in the first place. It wasn’t just a car company—it was a promise. Tesla’s mission was to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy, and you can’t really do that if only the wealthy can afford your cars. For a long time, fans gave Tesla the benefit of the doubt because the company was actually delivering: the Model 3 and Model Y became two of the best-selling EVs in the world.

At some point, however, promises have to turn into products.

This month, Tesla announced new “Standard” versions of both the Model 3 and Model Y. They were supposed to be that long-awaited affordable option. The Model 3 Standard starts at $36,990, and the Model Y Standard at $39,990. That’s cheaper, technically—but it’s not what people were expecting. And once you add Tesla’s $1,640 destination and order fees, those prices don’t fit what most people think of when you promise something “affordable.”

More importantly, to make those numbers work, Tesla seems to have just stripped out a bunch of features. Well, sort of. It has fewer speakers, no rear-seat display, and a simplified interior. It seems that the glass roof is still there, but Tesla just added a cloth headliner to cover it up.

Even some of Tesla’s most loyal fans are calling it disappointing. Instead of selling a cheaper car, Tesla just made the existing one feel cheap.

For investors, that might make sense. Tesla has been under pressure as sales slow and competition intensifies, especially in China and Europe. Cutting costs is one way to protect margins. But for customers, the move feels as though Tesla’s idea of affordability is just to take away all the nice things.

It’s not even that the new cars are bad. They are still Teslas, which means you still get the single greatest advantage of driving a Model Y or Model 3, which is that you can plug into the world’s best charging network. The thing is, Tesla has had five years to keep its word, and instead of delivering a $25,000 EV, it delivered a $40,000 one without a roof you can see through.

Every time Musk teases an affordable Tesla that never arrives, it seems less likely it ever will. It gets harder and harder to believe, and that’s a problem. Over time, broken promises add up to a pile of broken trust. Tesla’s greatest strength used to be that it could sell a vision—a future that felt like it was just around the corner. Eventually, fans give up.

Meanwhile, everyone else caught up to what was once a massive lead. BYD, Hyundai, GM, Kia, and even Volkswagen all have sub-$30,000 electric models on the road today. Many of them have comparable range, more comfort, and better build quality.

The new Chevy Bolt will likely undercut Tesla by almost $10,000 when it returns next year. And in Europe and China, there are now entire categories of small EVs that cost half as much as a Model 3 Standard. They may not have Tesla’s brand mystique, but they’re good enough—and good enough is what wins in the mass market.

The truth is that Tesla needs an affordable model more than ever. Not just because it made a promise, but for survival. Growth has slowed, margins are shrinking, and the company’s next act—self-driving robotaxis and humanoid robots—still seems a lot like science fiction.

At one point, Tesla’s promise of a $25,000 car felt like a bold declaration that technology could make sustainability accessible. Now, it feels like something Musk sold to build hype, even if he never believed it himself. You can’t change the world if the people who believed in you the most start to walk away.

In the end, that’s the real danger for Tesla–that it’s losing the trust that came from doing impossible things and delivering them anyway. When that’s gone, all that’s left is another car company trying to sell expensive cars in a world that’s already full of them.