No modern car company is better-known for advancing technology than Tesla. Inside one of Elon Musk’s vehicles, you can stream Netflix on a massive touchscreen while you wait for the car to recharge, then switch to Autopilot on the highway for a hands-free ride home. For a company like Tesla, dumping the AM/FM radio to cut costs does not exactly scream innovation.The radio is just one feature that Tesla has left out of two new cars in the name of affordability. Earlier this week, the company released the Model 3 Standard and Model Y Standard, two long-awaited, less expensive cars that are heavily pared-down versions of the company’s best sellers. The “vegan leather” seats are now partially cloth. The sound system isn’t as nice, and the side-view mirrors now have to be manually folded. Cheaper shock absorbers mean a harsher ride. Compared with their more nicely equipped siblings, these new cars are more Temu than Tesla. (Tesla and Musk did not respond to a request for comment.)Auto-industry observers and casual car-shoppers alike have wanted cheaper Teslas, but on the pricing front, the new models are a letdown. At about $37,000 for the streamlined Model 3 and $40,000 for the Model Y, each car represents a mere $5,000 in savings over the “premium” version. Even some of Musk’s biggest fans are underwhelmed. Before this cost-cutting fiasco, Tesla already was having a rough go of it. Musk’s bromance with President Donald Trump has turned away many would-be Tesla buyers. And although Musk might love the Cybertruck and its supposedly bulletproof doors, judging by its sales, many Americans do not. With Tesla’s newest cars, so many of Musk’s decisions are now catching up to him all at once.The latest models are not even in the same stratosphere as the $25,000 electric car that Musk said was in the works back in 2020. He was essentially promising a kind of zero-emission Toyota Corolla that could make electric driving accessible to more people than ever before. There are gas-powered cars at that price point, but not electric ones—in large part because batteries big enough to power EVs remain expensive to make. If anyone could pull off that price tag, the thinking went, surely it would be Tesla. The company is famous for its creative but ruthless approach to cost cutting. In a Tesla, pricey buttons are replaced by a screen where you swipe up and down to shift into drive or reverse. Tesla has also streamlined the way its cars are made, consolidating hundreds of parts that traditionally are stamped and welded together into single pieces of aluminum. As Musk has said, “The best part is no part.” Tesla is one of the few car companies that makes money from EVs, and the rest of the auto industry is now scrambling to copy its playbook.[Read: The American car industry can’t go on like this]Perhaps Musk could have made a $25,000 Tesla—had he not gotten distracted. In recent years, his focus has shifted away from cheap cars to fully autonomous ones. In 2023, Musk reportedly overruled company executives pushing for a new, cheaper Tesla, because it would still have to be driven by humans. Any entirely new Tesla would need to have “no mirrors, no pedals, no steering wheel,” he told Walter Isaacson, his biographer, about why he canceled the car. Eventually, Tesla officials promised that more affordable EVs would arrive in the form of derivatives of its existing cars, but surely the world was hoping for something more than manual side-view mirrors.There is a simple explanation for this letdown. Musk is pushing to turn Tesla into a robotics and AI powerhouse—and has an unprecedented, nearly trillion-dollar pay package hinging on whether he can deliver. But he still needs to sell cars to pay the bills, and Tesla could use some help in that department. The company’s share of the all-electric market recently hit an all-time low. Tesla has seen record EV sales in recent months, but so did just about every other carmaker in America, as buyers rushed to claim the $7,500 tax credit for going electric. That subsidy went away at the end of September, after it was vaporized by Trump’s signature budget bill. Without tax credits, EV sales in the United States are expected to sink, at least in the short term.If Tesla’s defense against that situation is to get rid of the radio antenna, the company may be in trouble. Nissan recently debuted a new version of its all-electric Leaf EV that starts at $30,000 and offers a Tesla-like 300 miles of range. And yes, it has power mirrors. So does the new Chevrolet Bolt, which was unveiled this week. It’s set to go on sale in a few months for less than $30,000. Hyundai also just slashed its prices, and some of its EVs undercut Tesla’s models without stripping away any features.This might have been a different story if Trump hadn’t targeted the tax credits. If the Teslas were $7,500 cheaper, their spare nature would be a lot more palatable. The newest Teslas are still packed with lots of great tech, and they can drive much farther than the new Chevy Bolt. At $30,000, the Model 3 Standard “would be a no-brainer,” Alistair Weaver, who leads the editorial team for the car-buying website Edmunds and drove both cars this week, told me. “That would be an amazing car.” The same could be said for the Model Y Standard, which still comes with features such as “Dog Mode,” allowing drivers to safely leave a pet unattended. “It’s hard to think of a gas car that does all that for 33 grand.”Unfortunately for Tesla, that’s not reality. Musk doesn’t seem to have regrets about spending hundreds of millions of dollars to fund Trump’s presidential campaign and then working in the White House to gut the federal government. The world’s richest man got his chance to reshape American politics, and he took it. But where did any of that really get his car company? Largely liberal Tesla owners have revolted against the company, one I bought this before Elon went crazy bumper sticker at a time. The time that Trump turned the White House lawn into a de facto Tesla showroom didn’t seem to do anything to boost sales. Because of the man he helped propel to the presidency, Musk’s cars are more expensive and less desirable than they could have been. The next time his stockholders want answers about falling Tesla sales, we’ll all be trying to find the guy who did this.