In Brief This all comes as Tesla's sales are tumbling in many parts of the world thanks to a combination of an aging lineup of vehicles, Musk's far-right politics and involvement in the U.S. government, and the underperformance of the Cybertruck. CEO Elon Musk first teased the idea of making a $25,000 Tesla at the company's "Battery Day" event in 2020. Tesla was developing a new platform that would be 50% cheaper to build, which it planned to use to power this new model, often colloquially referred to as th ...