Elon Musk has a big new idea: get people’s cars to earn them money. He did not elaborate on how the merger of the two companies would be accomplished in his blog post, but said the goal was better integration of solar power and Tesla’s Powerwall energy-storage battery packs.
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As the second part of Musk’s “masterplan”, the executive says he wants to bring out a “solar-roof-with-battery product” which individuals can install in their homes for generating their own energy. Musk explained why the company had chose to debut software that gave its vehicles partial autonomy rather than waiting to deliver a fully self-driving auto in the future, writing: “I should explain why Tesla is deploying partial autonomy now, rather than waiting until some point in the future”.
“With the Model 3, a future compact SUV and a new kind of pickup truck, we plan to address most of the consumer market”, Musk said. The company stopped making the $100,000 Roadster in 2012, the same year it debuted its $70,000 Model S sedan.
“In addition to consumer vehicles, there are two other types of electric vehicle needed: heavy-duty trucks and high passenger-density urban transport”, Musk, Tesla’s CEO, wrote in the blog post on Wednesday. Tesla on June 22 filed applications to use the Tesla name for solar energy systems and services, such as monitoring solar panels.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating the safety of the “Autopilot” system that allows Tesla vehicles to guide themselves on a highway with the driver’s hands off the wheel for extended periods.
With the launch of the Tesla Model 3 earlier this year, the firm is seemingly nearing completion of the first plan, although it still needs to prove it can produce the Model 3 on a mass scale.
Nearly exactly 10 years ago, Elon Musk released Tesla’s first “secret master plan”. “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 claims that once it is approved, you’ll be able to “sleep, read or do anything else on route to your destination”.
Additionally, Tesla shared specific plans related to its vision for the future of vehicle sharing. This will certainly wave off the loan amount to a certain extent and will make Tesla accessible to many. He commented: “Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving auto is likely to be several times that of a vehicle which is not”.
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If all goes according to Musk’s “Master Plan”, Tesla will operate its own fleet, letting everyone to pick up his vehicle regardless of location.
