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Elon Musk references a “revolutionary” late 2025 production start for EV brand’s new low-cost small car and SUV

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has outlined a 2025 production start for the all-electric car-maker’s upcoming “next-generation low-cost vehicle”, and confirmed the new model will initially be produced at Giga Texas before being outsourced to other plants around the world.

Musk made the announcement overnight during an investor’s earnings call and said the manufacturing processes set to be employed for Tesla’s new entry-level model/s will be revolutionary and head and shoulders above any other vehicle production on the planet.

Alternative sources of rubber from plants are being studied as a more sustainable substitute to natural rubber.

Tesla is reportedly working on compact crossover EV codenamed “Redwood” with production set to start in June 2025, sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The company is said to have sent requests for quotes for the new model to suppliers last year, predicting a weekly production volume of 10,000 vehicles.

Elon Musk has confirmed that a “next-generation low-cost” Tesla EV is in the works and is “optimistic” that it’ll arrive in the second half of 2025, he said in an earnings call yesterday. He also promised “a revolutionary manufacturing system” for the vehicle that’s far more advanced than any others in the world by a “significant margin.”

An article yesterday from Reuters indicated that the new vehicle would be a small crossover codenamed “Redwood.” Tesla reportedly sent requests to suppliers for quotes, predicting a weekly production volume of 10,000 vehicles. Musk previously stated that the automaker is working on two new EV models that could sell up to 5 million per year, combined.

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Tesla has confirmed a new Model 3 Performance configuration is coming, but the big questions of when it is and what changes it will have remain up in the air.

Early in 2024, Tesla removed the Performance configuration from the Model 3’s list of available trims. It was the most expensive of the three Model 3 offerings, but it still qualified for the EV Tax Credit.

With the rollout of the new Model 3 ‘Highland’ globally, Tesla has not yet finalized a Performance version of the vehicle. Currently, it only offers two variants: the Rear-Wheel-Drive and Long Range.

Hexagonal boron nitride coatings on metal alloys enhance durability, reduce friction, and protect against harsh conditions, paving the way for improvements in solar panels, semiconductors, and aerospace components.

Researchers demonstrated that stainless steel and other metal alloys coated with hexagonal boron nitride, or hBN, exhibit non-stick or low-friction qualities along with improved long-term protection against harsh corrosion and high-temperature oxidation in air.

Metal alloys — mixtures of two or more metals — are created to be strong, durable, and resistant to corrosion or oxidation. By adding coatings, or “armor,” to make those materials even tougher, scientists could enhance existing products and enable the creation of new, innovative ones.

Researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, have developed a new, more environmentally friendly way to create conductive inks for use in organic electronics such as solar cells, artificial neurons, and soft sensors. The findings, published in the journal Nature Communications, pave the way for future sustainable technology.

Organic electronics are on the rise as a complement and, in some cases, a replacement to traditional silicon-based electronics. Thanks to simple manufacturing, high flexibility, and low weight combined with the electrical properties typically associated with traditional semiconductors, it can be useful for applications such as digital displays, energy storage, solar cells, sensors, and soft implants.

Challenges in Organic Electronics.

A research team led by Lynden Archer, professor and dean of Cornell Engineering, has developed a new lithium battery that can charge in as little as five minutes. This could help address anxiety associated with the charging time of electric vehicles (EVs) and increase their adoption.

In their bid to reduce emissions from transportation, countries worldwide are looking to electrify various modes of transport. Road-based transport such as cars, buses, and trucks have led this transformation, aiming to even ban the sale of fossil fuel-powered cars in the next decade.

With technological advances, the fastest commercial charger can charge up an EV in no less than 30 minutes. While this might be a major improvement over the 8-hour charge cycles of a typical home-based charger, it still needs to be improved for large-scale adoption of EVs.

It’s the first time an all-electric car topped the yearly global car sales charts. We’re talking combustion-powered, hybrid, and all-electric.

Researchers with the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Stanford University and the DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) have grown a twisted multilayer crystal structure for the first time and measured the structure’s key properties. The twisted structure could help researchers develop next-generation materials for solar cells, quantum computers, lasers and other devices.

“This structure is something that we have not seen before—it was a huge surprise to me,” said Yi Cui, a professor at Stanford and SLAC and co-author of a paper published in Science describing the work. “A new quantum electronic property could appear within this three-layer twisted structure in future experiments.”