Musk suggested that the push towards self-driving technologies in America makes the Tesla Model Y L less of a priority for US release.
One of the more interesting promises to come out of Tesla in the last year was that it wanted to produce more affordable vehicles by the back half of 2025. Lo and behold, it looks like Tesla is set to deliver, at least in China, where the new Tesla Model Y L has launched. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem like that version is coming stateside anytime soon, as shared by Elon Musk himself in a recent social media interaction.
Elon Musk suggested that the Tesla Model Y L’s US launch is pretty far off, if not fuzzy in a recent exchange on Twitter this week. When word of the Tesla Model Y L’s launch in China spurred conversations about when the vehicle would launch in the United States, Elon stepped in to curtail expectations on a US launch:
This variant of the Model Y doesn’t start production in the US until the end of next year.
Might not ever, given the advent of self-driving in America.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 20, 2025
Tesla started speaking about delivering more affordable vehicles in early 2024. It even set the early 2025 target window, which the company has seemingly hit wit the Tesla Model Y L’s launch. Even so, Tesla’s priorities in the United States have been fairly clear over the last year with the company leaning heavily into autonomous driving and robotaxi systems, so much so that Elon is hoping Tesla’s robotaxi will serve roughly half of the US population by the end of 2025.
And so it seems those hoping for a cheaper Tesla model in the United States in the near future might be out of luck, at least until the back half of 2026. Stay tuned to the Tesla topic for more news and updates.
