alt Hacker News> My gut feeling says they are trying to move out of the EV business as crazy as that may seem to us normals.
It's not that crazy. The last new release of a truly mainstream car was the Model 3 a decade ago. Anything ever since has been facelifts and the ill-fated Cybercuck.
The major problem Tesla faces is that on the one side their brand image is in the gutters and has been for years and on the other side, "established" car companies finally have brought competitive cars to the market at relevant scale. They'll need to invest a lot of money to develop a new model from scratch with a high chance of not making back the money.
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Not to mention that internationally they are competing with Chinese EVs which are very compelling alternatives.
$100 per month in a $40k vehicle that allows it to drive sufficiently well 99% of the time such that it reduces driver stress and liability is worth something.
Other car manufacturers somehow can’t even provide dashcam recordings in a $40 vehicle.
> The last new release of a truly mainstream car was the Model 3 a decade ago.
I'm no Tesla fan, but having longevity in car models is a good thing. My fun car was built by VW in Germany for a decade and then by VW in South Africa for another decade; parts availability is great.
In today's marketplace of very samey cars, models that work should probably last a decade or more.
That said, Tesla could have built out a couple more styles, such as maybe a minivan/workvan/delivery van, although van sales can be pretty cyclical, and Tesla parts and service was (is?) notoriously poor in some cases, so I dunno if commercial users would be interested.