Tesla picks Texas, will redesign Model Y for European production

Enlarge / Tesla CEO Elon Musk attends an opening ceremony for Tesla's China-made Model Y program in Shanghai, east China, Jan. 7, 2020 (credit: Xinhua/Ding Ting via Getty Images)

On Wednesday afternoon, Tesla CEO Elon Musk answered questions from investors following the publication of the company's latest quarterly results. The headline news is that Tesla has picked Texas as the site for its next factory. When asked how many cars this new car plant could build, Musk told the call that "long term-a lot," with a chuckle.

Musk refused to be drawn in to talking specifics about any new Tesla EVs beyond the ones we already know about. "It's reasonable to assume we'd make a compact vehicle... at some point," he said, before pointing out that the company has a long way to go with the Models 3 and Y.

The biggest asset value increase in history

Musk still believes that the introduction of a completely autonomous driving system will be a game changer for Tesla, and he predicted that it would result in a fivefold increase in the value of a car thanks to much higher utilization. With regard to that program, the "major milestone is the transition of the autonomy system-or the car's AI-from thinking in like 2.5D, doing image recognition, partially correlated in time, to 4D. What we've been doing this far is really mostly 2D and not well correlated in time. It's hard to convey just how much better a fully 4D system would work," Musk said.

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