Tesla Unveils Their Second Master Plan

[William Maley]

Tesla's CEO Elon Musk teased last week of a new master plan that would be appearing early this week. But like the launch of one of their new vehicles, there was a bit of delay. Last night, the plan was unveiled. If you were hoping for some exciting announcements, then you'll be disappointed with this plan.

 

One of the big parts of 'Master Plan, Part Deux' is to "the major forms of terrestrial transport." What this means is the company is working on developing a compact SUV and a and a "new kind of pickup truck." Musk also says early development work has begun on a Telsa-Semi (Musk's name, not ours) and methods of urban transportation.

 

Musk goes on to talk about developing Tesla's semi-autonomous systems further. A lot of this will rely on utilizing fleet learning (i.e. Autopilot) to help speed up development to a fully autonomous system. The post says the world could be ready to accept autonomous vehicles after they've driven 6 billion collective miles. Using three million miles per day as an estimate, it could take up about 2,000 days (about 5.5 years).

 

Musk stands behind the Autopilot, saying “deploying partial autonomy now, rather than waiting until some point in the future” because “when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves (sic) and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability.”

 

Other bits of this master plan include,

• Setting up a car sharing service allowing owners to make some cash
• Creating solar-panel roofs with "seamlessly integrated battery storage." (Would involve the merger of Tesla and solar panel installer SolarCity)
  

Source: Tesla

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[David]

I read the multiple stories on this, watched the video of him and he is a master of deception. 

 

To me this master plan is for him to buy more time while they loose money.

 

I will say that I think he is bailing out his cousin who is running Solar City which is struggling financially.

 

http://abcnews.go.com/US/teslas-elon-musk-reveal-master-plan/story?id=40750247

 

I also think his research into the Tesla-Semi is due to what I posted here:

 

Tesla of Semi's

 

This is a start up by engineers who left Tesla as they felt the focus should have been on trucks rather than cars to make an impact in reducing green house gas.

 

This will be interesting to see and I do agree with Musk that Autopilot needs to move forward rather than people being scared of it and passing laws to slow or stop the technology.

[ocnblu]

[balthazar]

The post says the world could be ready to accept autonomous vehicles after they've driven 6 billion collective miles.

As my wheeler-dealer buddy Richie would say "How didja come up wit dat number?"

 

 

Musk stands behind the Autopilot, saying “deploying partial autonomy now, rather than waiting until some point in the future” because “when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves (sic) and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability.”

Did Musk just call ALL of his current & past consumers (along with every other motorist) "morally reprehensible" for driving??

[KevinW]

Also, the statistics used to support "significantly safer" are misleading.  There's not enough data to contrast with the number of fatalities per mile travelled for all other vehicles, plus the recommended use of "Autopilot" is for multi-lane, divided roadways, under ideal conditions, while the "fatality every 94 million miles" represents ALL driving conditions!

[balthazar]

Rut-roh!

 

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/teslas-master-plan-copy-gm-000000267.html

 

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Image is the trump card Tesla holds over it's competitors… if that starts to fray around the edges, the 'hill' will get taller.