Building a car from scratch is never an easy feat. Look at Proton, it takes a lot of capital to not only invest in research and development but also to perform safety testing, meeting international standards and ensuring that production methods are capable of mass producing it cost effectively. That is why some auto manufacturers save cost by buying a ready platform from other manufacturers or some of them share a platform across their group. This is what the Volkswagen Audi Group does with their MQB platform.
Tesla, on the other hand, started with electric cars in mind and as they just launched the latest Model 3, Elon Musk himself is thinking that the Model 3 platform should be reused again for other models. One such model is the upcoming crossover which Tesla wants to build. Predicted as the Model Y, Elon Musk mentioned in the latest call to investors that Tesla would reuse the Model 3 platform instead of building one from scratch.
That would be the smart and practical thing to do.
While it may not necessarily be what Elon Musk has in mind especially when it comes to an SUV platform, in the call it sounded as if he were looking at it from a more practical view versus what he had envisioned for the future of Tesla. Still, as Tesla continues to ramp up production on the Model 3 and continue to build more gigafactories, Elon Musk might shift more focus on ramping those up instead.
Previously, Elon Musk wanted to ditch the 12-volt battery platform in favour of creating a new architecture for the new crossover.
[Source: Jalopnik]
