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Tesla’s $25K car will force EV rivals to make painful sacrifices: industry experts
Industry experts from South Korea have noted that Tesla’s upcoming $25,0000 vehicle, which is expected to debut in about three years, will likely force the hand of the company’s domestic rivals. With such a vehicle in the market, automakers like Hyundai and Kia would have to come up with comparably-priced electric cars that could compete with Tesla in terms of price and features. Such initiatives would require vast resources to pull off.
In a statement to The Korea Bizwire, the industry experts noted that local EV manufacturers would likely need about four or five years to come up with a vehicle that’s on par with Tesla’s $25,000 car. Elon Musk has noted that the $25,000 Tesla will still feature great performance and tech like the company’s existing S3XY vehicle lineup. That’s a pretty high bar for rivals to meet, considering Tesla’s battery and tech advantage.
Current average market prices of EVs in South Korea excluding subsidies range between 45.6-48.8 million won (about $38,900-$41,600) for medium-sized models and about 39.2 million to 41.7 million won for smaller cars. With this in mind, the idea of a premium EV priced below 30 million won would likely be possible only if South Korean battery makers like LG Chem decide to match their prices with Tesla.
If domestic battery suppliers are unable to offer this, countries like South Korea would likely have to deal with an EV market that’s dominated by Tesla’s $25,000 car. In a statement to the publication, Lee Hang-gu, a senior researcher at the Korea Automotive Technology Institute, noted that companies like Hyundai, which already have an EV program, could see losses if they cut production costs to a level that matches Tesla.
“Hyundai Motor will lose 12 trillion won if domestic car makers cut production costs by 30 to 40 percent to compete with Tesla,” Lee said.
The upcoming arrival of Tesla’s $25,000 car may end up fostering innovation among its domestic rivals as well. Kwon Soon-woo, a researcher at SK Securities Co, explained that local electric car makers could catch up to Tesla’s price and level, but the automakers would have to sacrifice their profits in exchange for rapid technical breakthroughs in the coming years. But even then, Tesla’s $25,000 vehicle would still likely beat its rivals to market.
“If automakers sacrifice profits in exchange for a breakthrough in the market, EVs that cost less than 30 million won may be available in four to five years,” Kwon said.
Tesla’s $25,000 car has captured the interest of the EV market simply because such a vehicle could effectively transform Tesla into one of the most dominant automakers in the industry. With its price, Tesla would be able to cater to a much wider demographic than before, allowing the company to render even affordable ICE cars irrelevant. Such a vehicle may very well be successful in locations like South Korea and other surrounding Asian countries where affordable, practical vehicles are preferred.
Tesla revealed a major new Cybercab detail in a guide it released for First Responders, showing new territory in its beliefs and intentions for the ride-hailing-focused vehicle that entered production in April.
The First Responders Guide is released to give fire departments, paramedics, and other emergency personnel the proper guidance on what to do in the event of an accident, entrapment, or other situation that would require immediate attention.
On one of the pages of the First Responders Guide, Tesla revealed a stark detail about the Cybercab, which could help personnel enter the vehicle more easily in case of an emergency.
Tesla Cybercab has one important piece that AI4 cars might need for FSD
It shows Tesla has no intention of releasing any Cybercab units that were initially proposed for ride-hailing services for the general public with any manual controls, meaning a steering wheel or pedals:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or acceleration and brake pedals.”
New official Cybercab documentation from Tesla:
“A Cybercab equipped with steering wheel, brake pedal, and an acceleration pedal is typically an engineering or test vehicle, and operates at SAE Level 2 autonomy. Cybercab is not typically equipped with a steering wheel or… https://t.co/P6ut1mZyzr pic.twitter.com/yq6skl9s2J
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) June 27, 2026
This is a major development for those who continue to believe Tesla planned to release the Cybercab with any sort of manual controls so that passengers could take over if needed. However, when Tesla started manufacturing production versions of the Cybercab in Giga Texas earlier this year, they were spotted without a steering wheel or pedals.
It essentially confirms the company has no intentions of bringing manual controls to the car’s production versions. Some have argued that the likelihood of Tesla having something
There still are some Cybercab units out there with a steering wheel and pedals, and as Tesla said, these cars are engineering or test vehicles, which have Safety Monitors on board to help the car out of a precarious situation or emergency.
Tesla released the Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite to owners of Hardware 3 or AI3 vehicles today, adding several new features to the vehicles that were once believed to be capable of unsupervised self-driving.
Now, Tesla has released this modified suite to older Tesla vehicles, adding plenty of new features and capabilities.
Here are the full release notes for the suite:
- Distilled the intelligence from HW4 V14 into HW3. This allows HW3 to directly learn how to handle scenarios using HW4 V14 as a guide. This process unlocks the improvements that have been made to HW4 including Reinforcement Learning (RL) and offline models for HW3.
- Improved both proactive and reactive responsiveness across a wide variety of categories including navigation handling, merges and forks, pedestrian interactions, traffic lights, and vehicle cut-in scenarios.
- Improved general comfort in nominal scenarios through fewer false slowdowns, smoother steering and more consistent lane centering.
- Introduced parking, unparking, and reversing capabilities.
- Added Arrival Options for you to select where FSD should park: in a Parking Lot, on the Street, in a Driveway, or at the Curbside.
- Speed Profiles are now available at all times, to further customize driving style preference.
These improvements, according to Tesla’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, help distill the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of AI3.
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ for older cars finally gets released
He added:
“It includes destination options and speed profiles on city roads, but more importantly significantly improved safety. We hope you’ll enjoy it, once the build ships wide.”
FSD v14 Lite is now rolling out to AI3 early-access customers. Based on the feedback, will rollout to more customers over the next few weeks.
This build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute config of AI3. It includes destination…
— Ashok Elluswamy (@aelluswamy) June 29, 2026
Tesla will continue to roll out the v14 Lite suite more widely in the coming weeks, the company said.
Tesla has finally released its Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ suite for older cars that equip the Hardware 3 or AI 3 chip, which have not been able to handle the newest versions of the company’s driver assistance software.
Tesla officially started releasing the v14 Lite suite to owners in the Early Access Program last night. The company’s Head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, said that the rollout will continue over the next few weeks. The build distills the driving behavior from AI4’s v14 series into both the camera and compute configurations of an AI3 car.
🚨 Tesla is releasing v14 Lite for AI3 owners who are in early-access
This will give AI3 cars the ability to experience new FSD features like parking preferences. https://t.co/pp6Q5FOKoz pic.twitter.com/tqexMB8SVy
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) June 29, 2026
It also includes a variety of new features that were available to AI4 cars running v14, including:
- Start Self-Driving from Park
- Arrival and Parking Options
- Speed Profiles
The release is highly anticipated because those owners with AI3 vehicles were early adopters into the FSD platform and were promised that their cars would be capable of achieving Full Self-Driving.
However, Tesla CEO Elon Musk admitted during the company’s recent Q1 Earnings Call that these vehicles would not be capable of achieving unsupervised Full Self-Driving, which is what Tesla had originally said.
Owners were not pleased with this answer, or the idea that their commitment to buying the suite outright for thousands of dollars would not yield the ability to drive without operating the car. Tesla gave some solutions for this, including a discount on a new car, or an upgrade to an AI4 or AI5 self-driving computer and new, upgraded cameras.
Tesla owners do not seem pleased with these options, as they require giving the company more money.
Nevertheless, it is important to note that Tesla came through for owners here by releasing v14 Lite before the end of Q2, something it had promised owners during the previous Earnings Call. Tesla has had trouble keeping up with timelines, but this is a big achievement for the team.
Tesla reveals huge Cybercab detail in new guide for First Responders
Tesla Full Self-Driving v14 ‘Lite’ Release Notes: new capabilities and features
