Tesla’s shares rocket on promise of budget cars

TeSLA shares surged more than 12pc after it pledged to bring forward the launch of ‘more affordable’ cars.

The electric car maker said production could start this year, as the group run by tech billionaire elon Musk suffered its biggest drop in revenue in over a decade as demand stalls.

On Tuesday it posted sales of £17bn for the three months to the end of March, a 9pc fall from the year before and the largest slump since 2012.

Profits fell 86pc to £910m compared to £6.4bn a year ago.

But shares in the world’s most valuable car maker climbed 11.3pc yesterday as investors pinned their hopes on lowercost motors.

Tesla said it has ‘updated our future vehicle line-up to accelerate the launch of new models ahead of our previously communicated start of production in the second half of 2025’.

Musk said this meant production beginning ‘ by early 2025, if not late this year’. But the billionaire remained tightlipped on specific details about these ‘more affordable’ vehicles, although reports suggested they would cost £20,000 or less.

Tesla cars cost from around £55,000 to over £130,000 but earlier this month it revealed its first year- on-year fall in sales since 2020.

It sold 386,810 vehicles in the three months to the end of March, 9pc less than in the same period of 2023 – and well below Wall Street expectations of 454,000.

Musk also plans to axe 10pc of staff which would result in 14,000 job losses.