Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the second phase of the electric carmaker’s “master plan” on Wednesday. In it he outlines a future in which individuals use solar power to provide their own energy, automated vehicles replace heavy-duty trucks and buses, and self-driving technology that could be “10 times safer than the U.S. vehicle average” becomes pervasive.
Musk’s plan, drawing on projects he’s backed for years, represents an ambitious, public mission statement for a man and company known to reach for the improbable.
The new plan touches on four main goals, most of which are already in motion: Create affordable, individual-use solar roofs; expand electric vehicle production to many modes of transportation; popularize Tesla’s self-driving technology, called Autopilot; and allow for consumers to share their cars with others as a secondary form of income, like Zipcar.
“The main reason was to explain how our actions fit into a larger picture, so that they would seem less random,” Musk wrote on Tesla’s blog, noting that the company’s first “master plan,” was posted 10 years ago.
The original plan outlined by the car manufacturer involved focusing on different subjects, each adding to the main goal that Tesla hopes to achieve: sports cars that are economic as well. In short the master plan is:
Build sports cars
With that money build an affordable car
Use the money from building an affordable car to build and even more affordable car
Provide zero emissions electric power generations
Musk’s blog post comes after a tough couple of months for Tesla.
Just last month a driver was killed while using the company’s hailed Autopilot feature. While Tesla says that the accident happened under “rare” circumstances its technology faces increasing criticism and also a federal investigation.
This past month Tesla continued through their rough patch. The car company failed to meet expectations in their second quarter as it scrambled to increase manufacturing, spurred by astronomical preorders for the upcoming Model 3. Critics of Musk have even gone as far as to question his grand plan to speed up production.
Earlier this year, Musk said Tesla and his alternative energy company SolarCity would merge. Investors have been apprehensive about such a deal, but Musk said the union would benefit the world’s ultimate goal to achieve energy sustainability.
“That they are separate at all, despite similar origins and pursuit of the same overarching goal of sustainable energy, is largely an accident of history,” he wrote.
Scientists argue that almost all remaining fossil fuel reserves should be left in the ground to avoid the worst effects of human-induced climate change. That admonition, Musk said, has helped guide Tesla’s mission toward electric vehicle affordability.
“By definition, we must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilization will collapse,” he wrote. “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.”
