The Master Plan
So, I have to admit, I am a true fan of Elon Musk. He never ceases to amaze me and his newest creation-Tesla’s Master Plan, Part Deux-is packed with goodies. Let me give you guys a quick run down.
Elon first brought up one of his long time ideas-to get people fully on clean energy. See, Elon thought that although Teslas are making cars more environmentally friendly, your home is still reliant on fossil fuels. His idea is to be a one stop shop for electric for your home and car.
What he wants to do is expand SolarCity, the solar panel company that he recently purchased, so that homeowners can generate their own electricity to supply their Powerwall Tesla charger in their house. Pretty good idea Elon!
But wait, it gets better! The Musk man said that Tesla is already developing a fully electric pickup truck. Conventional pickup trucks require large, big old engines that pump out ridiculous amounts of fumes just so that they can have enough torque to lug their huge loads. Have no fear, Tesla is here! With their magically powerful drive trains (the Model X can tow 5,000lbs!) with the best torque packed batteries, truck drivers will love these electric pickup trucks. Expect the pickup truck to be revealed next year.
Elon went further and promised to create electric semi trucks that will drastically reduce the price of shipping and to develop an autonomous bus. In the world of autonomy, busses and semi trucks are all the rage. Better yet with autonomous busses, they can be redesigned and fit more people all while slashing traffic congestion.
Musk said that Tesla will still continue to develop their autonomous technologies and they will ALWAYS have a failsafe stop button and the ability to manually drive the car.
Finally, Elon brought up a valid point that our cars are only used 5-10% of the time. To solve this issue, Musk said that he is going to create an innovative sharing platform where a customer’s Tesla will be riding around, helping other people get around when you don’t need your car.
Everything will be done autonomously which is amazing. I am predicting that he will work with a ride sharing service (either Uber or Lyft) to integrate the autonomous Teslas into their fleet. Not only will this provide clean transport, it will reduce the cost of ownership immensely.
Well with this Master Plan in hand, Tesla is off to the races. I love it but the only question that I have is will they be able to advance their battery technology to equip the semi trucks for their long distance needs? There will certainly be a lot of exciting innovations coming out of Tesla in the upcoming years and I’m sure they can work out this kink!