As a car enthusiast and seeing the latest news through that lens, it now makes sense.
1. Lars came from Honda, so it makes sense they chose the Civic to tear down. The Civic is based on Honda's Global Platform. All of Honda cars excluding the North American Pilot, Ridgeline, Odyssey, and Passport are built on this platform. The CRV, HRV, (North American and ROW), Civic, Accord, and other vehicles sold out of North America are built on this Global Platform. That is where R&D money goes into, the platform and components. Those volume nameplates share many components under the skin. All manufacturers do this, Toyota has its TNG platform with 4/5ths of its products built on it.
2. So Reuters was right, the NV whatever was cancelled, but Reuters was wrong in that Tesla was abandoning that segment. I bet Lars has been developing a smaller vehicle based on the Y platform for some time. It's the platform and components underneath the skin that are key. Just as you can shrink a platform, one can enlarge it too, as again, automakers are doing now. It keeps Capex down. The new vehicle does not have to look like the Y or 3 to share the same line. Other automakers do this all the time. I bet the autobiographer was not at this meeting to use the present platform.
3. These decisions were made a year or two ago. IMO, explains the Model Y delay. Lars had stated in an interview to do a 48V architecture, one had to start with a new platform. If Tesla updates their highest seller, the Y to 48V architecture, and tweaks the platform, that immediately makes the CT more profitable per unit because the 48V unit prices will drop significantly. Its been stated on the Munro show the Cyber Truck is using a heavily updated Y chassis and components. It also makes the new lower price Tesla and RT cheaper to make using 48V components.
4. And remember the pics of covered chassis seen in Austin and Fremont? We were wondering if it was a Model Y or not? No, were not looking at the RT new gen chassis, but it could have been the new cheaper Tesla in development. Which has been described as a smaller Y.