Even Musk seems to realize that Tesla’s future pricing numbers are made up

During Tesla’s Robotaxi event earlier this month, the company revealed that the autonomous-focused vehicle would be available to end users for just a $30k base price.

While this isn’t quite the $25k car we’ve been promised for many years, the $30k pricetag for a fully autonomous vehicle did seem quite attractive to many people.

…If it were real. And it turns out it was not.

Today on Tesla’s earnings call, Musk made multiple conflicting statements about the pricing of the Tesla Robotaxi, suggesting that even he has no idea how much the vehicle will cost when it comes out.

The first question asked on the call went thusly:

Is Tesla still on track to deliver the more affordable model next year, as mentioned by Elon earlier, and how does it align with your AI and product roadmap?

We just reported on this earlier today, when the shareholder letter said that more affordable models will come out next year. We came away questioning which model Tesla is talking about – will it be the Model Y refresh, or an actual new model that we haven’t yet heard anything about?

In response to this shareholder question, Tesla added a third option into the mix: maybe they were talking about Robotaxi? (which, it should be noted, almost everybody except Musk recognizes is not actually coming out next year)

Tesla answered the question in this way:

As Elon and Vaibhav both said, it’s our plan to meet that in the first half of next year. Our mission has always been to lower the cost of our vehicles to increase the adoption of sustainable energy and transport. Part of that is lowering the cost for current vehicles. The next stage in that fits into our AI roadmap which is when we bring in Robotaxi which lowers the initial cost of getting into an EV

Then, immediately after this discussion about Robotaxi, Musk immediately added:

It’ll be like, with incentive, sub 30k. Which is kind of a key threshold.

And this is actually new information. Prior to this, Tesla had only said that the vehicle would start at $30k – without specifying if this was pre- or post- incentive.

If it’s post-incentive, that means the Robotaxi will have a base price of potentially $37,499 – which is in fact not measurably more affordable than other cars Tesla has made before.

Previously, the Model 3 has sort-of-kind-of been available for $35k as an “off-menu” item, but it’s questionable whether anyone was able to take advantage of that brief pricing window. But Tesla still has a blog post on its site announcing this vehicle’s availability.

More realistically, the cheapest available Tesla has been the $38,990 Model 3 from last year, which was available with an upfront $7,500 federal tax credit. That puts it at just $1,400 more expensive than the future $37.5k Robotaxi, a less than 4% difference in price.

So the Robotaxi does not look to be significantly cheaper than past models, and the $30k price seems to be based on incentives.

Notably, these are incentives that Musk is actively working to end. Musk has committed hundreds of millions of dollars to harm EVs, aiming his money at a candidate who asked oil companies to bribe him to end EV incentives, whose Project 2025 platform calls for an end to the bill that created these EV incentives, and who has hallucinated about ending an EV mandate that doesn’t exist.

So it might be hard to meet that $30k number if Musk has committed so much money and time towards ending the incentive that he just acknowledged his pricing promise relies on.

But maybe it’s not actually going to be $37.5k after all?

Because, later in the same call, when asked when Tesla would have a $25k model vehicle (like the one Musk recently cancelled) that isn’t the Robotaxi/Cybercab, Musk said: “having a regular 25k model is pointless” and then later in the same answer, said about the Robotaxi that “it’ll cost on the order of constructively 25k. So it is a 25k car. And you will be able to buy one exclusively if you want.”

So, despite just minutes ago clarifying that the Robotaxi would be $30k after incentive, he went on to say that it would instead cost $25k, and didn’t mention whether incentives are involved in that pricing number.

This $5k change in pricing over the course of just a few minutes recalls a similar passage in Tesla’s 2024 shareholder meeting, wherein Musk suggested that Optimus robots (which are currently operated remotely by humans) could eventually be worth some $20 trillion to Tesla’s market cap. A few minutes later, Musk said he thinks it would be worth $25 trillion to Tesla’s market cap – a jump in valuation larger than the total value of any company in the history of the world, and over the course of just a few minutes no less.

All of this suggests something that many observers have recognized for a while: when a number comes out of Elon Musk’s mouth, it may or may not have any bearing in reality. That’s certainly been the case on release dates at many points in Tesla’s past, and to Musk’s claims on FSD interventions. But it has also applied to prices, and that seems to apply again here.

The difference this time, however, is that instead of picking one fake price and sticking to it, even after it’s apparent that it won’t be the case, Musk now seems to change his fake numbers from sentence to sentence.

Perhaps he’s finally realizing the thing everyone else realized long ago.

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