10 years ago he released his “Master Plan” which he’s mostly achieved since and now it’s time for “Master Plan Part Deux”, which will take electric cars and solar power to new heights.
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“A smoothly integrated and lovely solar-roof-with-battery product that just works, empowering the individual as their own utility, and then scale that throughout the world”.
The bus – which will be able to carry more passengers than a conventional model thanks to the deletion of a centre aisle and putting seats where entryways are now located – is in the early stages of development and will be unveiled next year.
But, says Musk, for this vision to become reality, Tesla and SolarCity need to be one company. In a sub-heading titled Sharing, Musk expounds his support for the concept of car-sharing – allowing others to use your self-driving vehicle and generate income while you’re not using it through the introduction of a Tesla shared fleet.
Announcing the second part of his master plan on Tesla’s website last night, Musk confirmed there will be a compact SUV and pick-up truck in its vehicle line-up, while ruling out a cheaper vehicle than the Model 3.
Musk owns 22 per cent of SolarCity’s shares, and he is chairperson and a major shareholder of the company.
Musk said that as technology matures, all Tesla vehicles will be fully self-driving, but with “fail-operational capability, meaning that any given system in the auto could break and the auto will still drive itself safely”.
It would no more make sense to disable Tesla’s Autopilot, as some have called for, than it would to disable autopilot in aircraft, after which our system is named, Musk wrote. In it, he said it was the company’s goal to use money it made building the Roadster to make a luxury sedan, the Model S, and use the money from that to make an even more affordable auto, the Model 3.
Allow your vehicle to make money for you when you aren’t using it. Web users who type in teslaenergy.com to find out about the company’s batteries are now redirected to tesla.com/energy. Musk stands firm that the company is doing the right thing by rolling out partial autonomy now and expects that worldwide regulatory approval of self-driving vehicles will require around six-billion cumulative miles driven by self-driving vehicles.
The plan could also offset the cost of owning one of Tesla’s models, making them available to a wider market.
On June 21, Musk proposed Tesla buy SolarCity.
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While this is the first time Musk has flat out said Tesla will be launching a service to let people rent out their Tesla cars, he has been hinting at it for some time. Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all the main segments. Tesla’s Autopilot feature – the autonomous driving mode that is switched off by default – is also leading the charge towards autonomous vehicle applications.
