Tesla’s new master plan revealed, and it’s Uber ambitious

Part two of Elon Musk’s Tesla Masterplan has landed – just over a week after he hinted at its release on Twitter – firming up plans to merge Tesla and Solar City into a solar and battery storage powerhouse, and revealing the scale of the company’s ambition to dominate the autonomous vehicle and car-sharing space.

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In a blog post published on the Tesla website late on Wednesday, Musk summarised the “Tesla Master Plan, Part Deux” thus:

“Create stunning solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage; Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments; Develop a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning; Enable your car to make money for you when you aren’t using it.”

The updated schedule comes, as noted, 10 years after Musk first blogged about a Secret Tesla Master Plan that involved building what would become the first luxury sports Model S.

As Musk noted in his blog on Wednesday, that first master plan – essentially, create a low volume car, which would necessarily be expensive; use that money to develop a medium volume car at a lower price; use that money to create an affordable, high volume car; and… provide solar power – is now in the final stages of completion.

Now, it is clearly time to think bigger and further into the future. Here’s how Musk explains it:

“The point of all this was, and remains, accelerating the advent of sustainable energy, so that we can imagine far into the future and life is still good. That’s what “sustainable” means. It’s not some silly, hippy thing – it matters for everyone.

“By definition, we must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilisation will collapse. Given that we must get off fossil fuels anyway and that virtually all scientists agree that dramatically increasing atmospheric and oceanic carbon levels is insane, the faster we achieve sustainability, the better.”

One of the most interesting parts of the new plan include Musk’s thoughts on car sharing, in which he imagines a Tesla shared fleet that customers can access anytime, anywhere, “just by tapping a button” on an app. Sound familiar? It’s basically Uber, but with Teslas on autopilot.

As with Uber, the main aim of this part of Tesla’s plan is to find a way of generating income for Tesla EV owners when they’re not using their cars. And Musk says that in cities where demand exceeds supply of customer-owned cars, “Tesla will operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are.”

Going beyond Uber, however, the service would be taken to the next level via Tesla’s autonomous driving technology, which Musk says will mean drivers will be able to summon their Tesla from “pretty much anywhere. Once it picks you up, you will be able to sleep, read or do anything else enroute to your destination.”

Fully autonomous driving, while not a new or even far-fetched concept, might seem like a bold prediction coming from Tesla so soon after the much publicised death of a Model X driver whose car is believed to have been operating in autopilot mode when it ploughed into the underside of a truck in Florida in May.

But Musk argues in his blog that the technology “is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves, and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability.”

Musk also explains why Tesla labels its Autopilot system as “beta:”

“This is not beta software in any normal sense of the word… It is called beta in order to decrease complacency and indicate that it will continue to improve (Autopilot is always off by default). Once we get to the point where Autopilot is approximately 10 times safer than the US vehicle average, the beta label will be removed,” he said.

On the Tesla Auto EV range, the plan is to expand it to cover all major forms of terrestrial transport, namely heavy-duty trucks and public transport vehicles. According to Musk, both are already in the early stages of development at Tesla and should be ready for unveiling in 2017.

“We believe the Tesla Semi will deliver a substantial reduction in the cost of cargo transport, while increasing safety and making it really fun to operate,” he said.

As for solar and battery storage, Musk says the plan to “create a smoothly integrated and beautiful solar-roof-with-battery product that just works, empowering the individual as their own utility, and then scale that throughout the world,” hinges on the already attempted merger of Tesla and Solar City.

“That they are separate at all… is largely an accident of history,” he says. “Now that Tesla is ready to scale Powerwall and SolarCity is ready to provide highly differentiated solar, the time has come to bring them together.” Watch this space.

Comments

7 responses to “Tesla’s new master plan revealed, and it’s Uber ambitious”

  1. MaxG Avatar
    MaxG

    Trying times need bold leaders… I love his approach…

  2. howardpatr Avatar
    howardpatr

    Imagine this vision with a few major breakthroughs with batteries – like magnesium based batteries with say double the capacities of Powerwall.

    I suspect this and more could well be achieved in the not too distant future. Such battery technology and scaled up production of it will see Musk’s and many others visions re the renewable energy age come to fruition by say 2025.

  3. Tony Hardy Avatar
    Tony Hardy

    Totally get it, well done Elon.
    This is my favorite part “By definition, we must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilisation will collapse. Given that we must get off fossil fuels anyway and that virtually all scientists agree that dramatically increasing atmospheric and oceanic carbon levels is insane, the faster we achieve sustainability, the better.”

  4. Petra Liverani Avatar
    Petra Liverani

    Some good news amid “Trump digs coal”, “climate change uncertainty” from new supposed-economist-but-no-idea-of-trends-35-year-old-dinosaur Minister for Energy and Northern Queensland, Matt Hasntaclue and the surely-not-still-going chestnut carbon capture and storage from Tosh Frightening.

  5. Ian Avatar
    Ian

    How can we get Tesla or Panasonic or other battery manufacturers to set up a factory in Australia for our motoring needs? Perhaps some sort of reverse auction.

    If you follow Musk’s actions and line of thinking you will come to this overarching conclusion. Transportation uses oil, fossil fuel burning causes global warming. EV are the substitute for oil fueled vehicles, build EV. Build the battery factories to supply them.

    The USA in 2015 spent $570 billion on 17.7 million new cars and light trucks. (WSJ) and used 19.4 million bbl oil a day (eia.gov) . Elon Musk’s little factory in Nevada will build enough battery packs for 1/2 million cars. The Americans need 35 gigafactories to substitute EV for ICE. Musk will be hard pressed supplying his home market, let alone ours. We need 2 gigafactories to cover our needs .

    What about China, can’t they supply us with battery packs? In 2015 ,21.15 million cars were sold in China. They need at least 42 gigafactories to cover their needs.

    The world needs a lot of players in the vehicle battery market if oil is to be left unburnt, and each country should be doing their part.

    1. Ian Avatar
      Ian

      I think the Über-style car sharing concept Musk talks about is his way of pointing to the daunting nature of the task to substitute alternatives for oil fueled vehicles- Perhaps if 1 car can transport 5 or more sets of people a day rather than 1 set then the total investment in EV can be less to achieve the aim of decarbonising transportation.

      China and many Asian countries are on the right path with investment in metro systems and high speed trains, but still, all that is not nearly enough to cover their transport needs.

      Anyone who tackles the oil problem, such as Musk, deserves to succeed and to become incredibly rich in the process. The problem is mountainous but the opportunities are just as great.

      1. carla rush Avatar
        carla rush

        Sounds goods please let us know when it’s ready for use.

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