No Model Y upgrade this year – Musk

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the world's best selling EV, the Tesla Model Y, will not see a model upgrade this year, despite his firm's sales growth slowing on the back of an ageing product line-up.

EV leader Tesla has seen sales squeezed this year, leading analysts to predict little to no growth for the company in the next two years in the absence of a new mass-market product. In Q1 of this year, however, Musk instigated a highly publicised shift in the company's focus away from trying to develop a radical new low-cost model towards being primarily a AI and autonomy company.

Plans for a more affordable EV now call for a less ground-up approach and could entail a new offering towards the end of this year in a best case scenario. And focus on this may be why, although last year saw a Model 3 upgrade dubbed 'Highlander', Musk, writing today on social media site X (formrly Twitter), says that "no Model Y refresh is coming out this year".

Musk insists instead that Tesla's manufacturing processes and over-the-air update capabilities allows the OEM to implement improvements without full-fledged model upgrades.

"I should note that Tesla continuously improves its cars, so even a car that is six months newer will be a little better," he continues.

The subject of upgrades to Tesla's existing models has received renewed attention ever since Musk said that the OEM's plans for new lower-cost offerings would be based at least in part on exiting product lines.

"It is not contingent upon any new factory or massive new production line; it will be made on our current production lines much more efficiently," Musk told analysts on Tesla's Q1 call. "And we think this should allow us to get to over 3mn vehicles of capacity when realised to the full extent."

On the call, Musk then faced questions from Bernstein analyst Tony Sacconaghi as to whether the products might represent "tweaks on existing models, given that they are going to be running on the same lines, or are these new models?".

Without a Model Y upgrade, Tesla's next product reveal will be August's launch of an as yet vaguely defined 'robotaxi', details of which have been hard to come by from Tesla management.