Tesla teases Model Y crossover at its AGM

The American EV start-up has given a sneak peek into its next electric car project, christened the Model Y.

The company held its annual shareholders’ meeting in California on June 6 and CEO, Elon Musk, took the opportunity to give a hint into what’s cooking inside the R&D labs of the world’s largest electric car company.

The Tesla Model Y is a compact crossover, slated to touch the assembly lines within the next couple of years, by 2019-2020. Musk also gave a clear insight on the new crossover’s underpinnings, which earlier, were believed to be shared with the company’s SUV offering, the Model X, below which the new crossover is going to be positioned.

However, the CEO shattered these predictions and announced that the Model Y will be based on a completely new architecture, having different layouts for battery and circuits, than what currently exists in Tesla’s product line-up. All products from the company in the near future will also supposedly be based on this new platform.

The company is also hopeful of the new model becoming its biggest selling vehicle, given the fact that compact crossovers are the latest global trend in the automotive space.

Tesla had also intended to enter the Indian market with its Model 3 sedan by summer of CY2017, but, the company has fallen short of its target deadline, owing to misinterpretation of selling norms applicable on foreign players in India. The Model 3 has clocked some 400,000 bookings globally, with some numbers also coming in from India.

Interestingly, given India’s ambitions to move towards electric mobility, as defined by government’s policy think-tank NITI Aayog and Rocky Mountain Institute in a recent report, Anand Mahindra, chairman, M&M, also invited Musk to start operating in India to explore the humongous opportunities lying ahead in the EV space in the country.