Tesla Model Y: will Elon Musk announce budget SUV tonight?

Tesla chief executive Elon Musk is expected to make an announcement about the electric car company later today, with fans to speculating that he may reveal the new Model Y SUV.

In a series of tweets, the South African-born billionaire hinted that he would be sharing “some Tesla news” at 2pm (10pm UK time) in California.

This spawned a sea of messages from fans, many of whom suggest that this evening’s announcement will see the appearance of the Model Y - a cheaper alternative to the company’s Model X SUV - for the very first time.

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While Tesla devotees seem overwhelmingly in favour of seeing the new budget electric crossover, some experts have suggested that fans might be left disappointed by tonight’s announcement.

Marques Brownlee, a tech blogger with more than eight million subscribers on YouTube, said in a tweet that Musk may demonstrate a fully-autonomous system on one of Tesla’s existing cars, or unveil a new “version 3” of the company’s Supercharger fast-charging station network.

Going on comments made by Musk last year, there is a chance tonight’s announcement may well focus on the Model Y.

In an interview with Bloomberg last year, the entrepreneur said that Tesla had “almost finished the design in the studio of Model Y, and we will probably debut the prototype, you know, roughly in March of next year”.

Details about the Model Y are scarce and Musk has released only a handful of shadowy preview images of the car so far.

According to Autocar, the Model Y will use the same production platform as the Model 3, suggesting the new car will take the form of a budget SUV.

With this in mind, EV news site DrivingElectric says the crossover will probably have the same powertrains as the Model 3, offering buyers a “choice of a 220-mile range on the basic car and 310 miles on the range-topping version”.