Yahoo Autos Tesla's looks are getting stale, and Elon Musk can't ignore it forever
Rumors have swirled about Model 3 and Model Y updates, but nothing official yet from Tesla.
"When you move to higher-volume vehicles, you have to start keeping up with the Joneses," one analyst said.
Vehicle redesigns have long helped car companies juice demand.
Tesla is in need of a facelift.
That's what industry experts and analysts say as its oldest mass-produced car, the Model S sedan, nears its 11th birthday in June. Rumors have swirled online about incoming refreshes of the Model 3 and Model Y vehicles, but Tesla has yet to set a release date for these updates.
Updates of the Model 3 and Model Y, both of Tesla's most affordable vehicles, will be key to the company increasing its deliveries this year, Deutsche Bank analysts told clients earlier this week. (The bank also trimmed its full-year vehicle delivery forecast, down to an expected 1.7 million units.)
Tesla has kept up a steady stream of new vehicles in the last decade: the Model X in 2016, the Model 3 in 2017, the Model Y in 2020, and finally (maybe) the Cybertruck later this year.
But Elon Musk's electric-vehicle maker has never returned to any of these models to redesign for the model-year changeover, a common practice across the industry to keep designs fresh and customers clamoring for the next best thing.
