A benchmark in electric cars, this popular brand wants to launch a new model at a knockdown price.
Electric cars are still too expensive for many households, most of the time 25 to 50% more to purchase than those running on gasoline or diesel. But car manufacturers, who have been asked to no longer sell any thermal vehicles by 2035, are trying by all means to reduce this gap to reach a wider customer base.
Today, Dacia remains the brand that offers the most affordable vehicles on the French electric market. The Spring and the Sandero are accessible from 19,800 and 20,800 euros. Citroën, determined to relaunch its sales, will very soon sell its very first green energy C3, the ë-C3, the entry ticket for which will start at 23,300 euros excluding ecological bonus. The city car from the chevron brand will also be more interesting than the Dacia from the 1er January 2024 because the cars of the Romanian subsidiary of the Renault group will then no longer be eligible for state bonuses.
Renault, with its future R5 E-Tech, expected next year, also wants to place itself with an announced price of around 25,000 euros. But the French manufacturers – to which we must add Peugeot even if the 100% electric models of the Lion still remain quite expensive – could take a very dim view of the imminent arrival of a very big market player in the electric car sector at low costs. Until now known for its fairly high-end sedans or SUVs, Tesla, whose Model Y is the best-selling electric car in the world in 2023, is in fact preparing the release of a new model at…25,000 euros .
This is very far from the current prices charged by Tesla on the Model 3, the sedan at 42,990 euros, and on the Model Y, its SUV available from 45,990 euros (excluding ecological bonus). But Elon Musk, the big boss of the American firm, wants to tackle a new target. Visiting the Berlin factory at the beginning of November, the billionaire confirmed that his teams were already working on the “Next-Gen” project. If very little information has yet filtered, the one which could respond to the name “Model A” or “Model 2” would be much more compact than its predecessors and mainly intended for the European market. Enough to seriously worry the competition which until now did not have to battle with Tesla on “low” prices.
The other bad news for French manufacturers, and not only that – we are thinking in particular of Volkswagen and its ID.2 announced in 2025 for less than 25,000 euros – is that the new Tesla will be built in Germany. Thus, unlike cars assembled in the United States or Asia, it should benefit from the ecological bonus in France. A new Tesla for 20,000 euros? This could reshuffle the cards and further assert the leadership of the American brand in the electric car market.