Musk: Tesla to become a sustainable energy company

On Wednesday evening, Tesla CEO and founder Elon Musk released his “Master Plan 2,” detailing the ways in which he hopes to have Tesla contribute to making the energy economy sustainable. The plan would see consumers handle their own energy via a solar/battery combination and provide electric vehicles for every market segment.

The radical part of the plan, however, would see improved self-driving capabilities allowing people to turn their Tesla into a taxi while they’re not using it, potentially offsetting the entire cost of ownership.

The blog post introduces the plan as being all about energy:

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. 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.

Musk then goes on to describe the ways that Tesla will contribute to that. The plan is incredibly ambitious, but there is a history here.

Musk’s latest blog post recalls a “Master Plan” post the CEO wrote in 2006, where he mapped out Tesla’s projected expansion. Musk discussed how he would use money from the Roadster to build the Model S luxury sedan, money from the Model S to build the more-affordable Model 3 (which is expected out in 2018), and further the goal of energy independence by cross-marketing SolarCity’s panels with his new electric cars.

In the subsequent decade, Musk’s business has largely kept true to that plan, with some slight deviations—Tesla introduced an additional car, the luxury electric Model X SUV, in 2015. The company also broke ground on the Gigafactory, a giant electric vehicle battery factory in Nevada that it’s building with Panasonic to push down the costs of lithium-ion batteries. And, early last year, Tesla announced a stationary storage battery for homeowners to use to supplement solar panels and rely less on traditional power grids.

Musk’s latest master plan builds on Tesla’s purchase of SolarCity, which is run by Musk’s own cousins. Many analysts have criticized this deal, especially as Tesla enters a phase in which it should be focusing on getting out the Model 3 as quickly and efficiently as possible. However, shareholders are expected to approve the deal soon.

According to Musk, the purchase is central to Tesla. He intends to create a single solar energy/battery storage system that can make people energy independent with a single purchase. “We can’t do this well if Tesla and SolarCity are different companies,” he argues, going on to say that both companies have reached the point where they’re ready to scale production of their products, so the time is right.

In the future he outlines, any excess power that doesn’t go into the home battery will be put into a car. Or a compact SUV or pickup truck, which are in the planning stages. We’ll also see the announcement of a Tesla Semi next year, and Musk said the company is working on a completely redesigned city bus that’s smaller, has denser seating, and takes passengers directly to their destination, rather than the nearest bus stop. What Tesla doesn’t plan on making is a low-cost vehicle for reasons we’ll get back to below.

That will almost certainly depend on autonomous driving, which is another major point of the master plan. Tesla’s autopilot software has come under fire after a customer was killed in a crash with a left-turning truck while the self-driving option was on, and Musk spends a lot of his blog post defending the system. He claims that, “when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves,” and data from Tesla drivers is improving it rapidly. Once it gets 10 times safer than the US vehicle average, the beta label will be removed.