In 2006, Elon Musk revealed his “master plan” for Tesla, a long-term strategy on how the Tesla CEO envisions the company developing over the next decade or so. Roughly 10 years later, he revealed the second part of the master plan. And now, another five years on, he’s working on the third instalment.
This third part of Musk’s master plan hasn’t yet been revealed in full, but on Monday, he shared some hints on what it will look like.
“Main Tesla subjects will be scaling to extreme size, which is needed to shift humanity away from fossil fuels, and AI,” tweeted Musk. “But I will also Include sections about SpaceX, Tesla and The Boring Company.”
Musk’s master plan for Tesla might sound gimmicky but it’s worth paying attention to, given that the first (arguably extremely ambitious) part of the master plan has largely become reality
Here’s a refresher. In his original master plan, Musk said Tesla’s strategy was to start by building a sports car (the original Tesla Roadster), then use the money to build an affordable car (that was the Model S), then use that money to build an even more affordable car (that was the Model 3). The execution hit a few speed bumps along the way — remember Tesla’s “production hell” and Model 3 delays? — but Tesla ultimately pulled it off.
The second part of the master plan hasn’t gone that well. It included launching a Tesla Semi truck (in production, but not available yet), a Solar Roof (available but with long wait times), and building a fleet of fully autonomous vehicles (not there yet).
One thing that has been going well, however, is sales of currently available Tesla models, and it appears that Musk plans to leverage that success to scale the company to “extreme size.” Tesla is already growing pretty fast — the company’s massive Texas Gigafactory is ramping up volume, and it’s about to start production on its first Gigafactory in Europe soon — but the company previously said it plans to produce 20 million cars annually by 2030, so that may be the “extreme” size Musk is referring to.
Also, as Electrek points out, Musk mentioning his other companies, including SpaceX and The Boring Company, might indicate that he’s planning to round them all up under one big umbrella company, such as Alphabet or Meta.
