Q3 2024 Earnings call, Musk said

So, anyway, basically, I think having a regular 25K model is pointless. It would be silly. Like it would be completely at odds with what we believe. ...

And if you try to make a car that is essentially a hybrid, manual, automatic car, it's not going to be as good as a dedicated autonomous car. So, yes, Cybercab is just not going to have steering wheels and pedals.

What we designed is optimized for autonomy. It will cost on the order of -- cost roughly 25K, so it is a 25K car. And you can -- you will be able to buy one exclusively if you want. So, it just won't have steering wheels and pedals.

You don't need it.

https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2024/10/23/tesla-tsla-q3-2024-earnings-call-transcript/

This seems pretty clear they are doing cybercab only and not a cybercab and a cheap manually driven car.

Together with no sign of a new model by now(/the close date 13 Jan 2026) should be enough to resolve this question yes.

It isn't clear to me what Elon is saying is the lie by Reuters, it could be just the 'low cost car plans' and Musk is saying this is a lie because of Tesla's plans for the cybercab and the stripped down model Y. This doesn't matter here because this question is about Model 2 (low cost ~$25k car) and this does not seems to part of Tesla's current plans.

@elf The q3 Earnings call seems pretty clear, they decided against doing a model 2 and nothing since seems to suggest they have changed their minds AFAICS.

I think this should be enough to resolve noyes but if you think differently, what else is needed?

From Q4 2025 earnings call:
But the CyberCab, which is a specific model that we're making, does not have a steering wheel or pedals. So this is clearly, there's no fallback mechanism here. It's like this car either drives itself or it does not drive. We expect to start production in April.
https://www.fool.com/earnings/call-transcripts/2026/01/28/tesla-tsla-q4-2025-earnings-call-transcript/

No change there, so time to resolve yes? @elf

The Reuters article uses two project codenames, H422 and NV91; neither of those strings appears in Google's search index in association with Tesla, prior to the Reuters report, as far as I can find. The Reuters article claims that the vehicle was cancelled "in late February"; given the number of people and external suppliers that would be involved, it seems pretty implausible to me that this information would remain unleaked for more than a month.
My prediction: these codenames correspond to a cancelled project (or projects) that are related to Model 2, but not the totality of Tesla's Model 2-related development. That could be because they had several overall-vehicle development projects happening in parallel, or it could be a specific prototype or specific manufacturing technique.