30 ms·

Master Plan, Part Deux

• sna1l 10y ago
  > "Create a smoothly integrated and beautiful solar-roof-with-battery product that just works, empowering the individual as their own utility, and then scale that throughout the world. One ordering experience, one installation, one service contact, one phone app. We can't do this well if Tesla and SolarCity are different companies, which is why we need to combine and break down the barriers inherent to being separate companies. 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. Now that Tesla is ready to scale Powerwall and SolarCity is ready to provide highly differentiated solar, the time has come to bring them together." I don't really see how this answers the question as to why they need to merge? Why can't their just be a partnership?
  • duncan_bayne 10y ago
    The friction caused by integration points between two companies in that sort of arrangement is usually a significant pain point for customers. (Anecdotal evidence, based on working in an energy startup in Australia for a few years).
• jpeg_hero 10y ago
  Meh. Sure, stuff sounds neat, but where are you going to get the capital from? Another secondary share offering? I guess the most concrete thing I saw was new factory for Model 3. Shouldn't that be your only priority? Not designing an electric semi truck on paper to entice Joe Q Public into stepping up for another secondary share offer?
  • aerovistae 10y ago
    I swear to god he could do it all just as described and there will still be people who have nothing to say but "meh." Blows my mind.
    • hueving 10y ago
      It's almost as if some people are skeptical!
      • aerovistae 10y ago
        It's almost as if he's delivered on everything he promised while running the two most difficult companies in America simultaneously! "We'll never have reusable rockets, what a joke..."
        • serge2k 10y ago
          > It's almost as if he's delivered on everything he promised hasn't Tesla repeatedly missed price points and delivery dates. Or are those not promises. I actually think most of what he is talking about is pretty doable. The ones I'm skeptical of are his talk about the massive factory improvements (in a few years too?) and the magic buses with no aisles or entrances. By what measure are Tesla and SpaceX the "two most difficult companies in America"
          • aerovistae 10y ago
            I'm actually curious about the bus, too. Sounds weird. But I trust his judgement, I'm sure it'll be great. He has a track record, you know. Regarding missed promises, if you're saying that as if to suggest that what he's promised isn't nonetheless coming true at a pace faster than anyone else could have possibly delivered, I think you're wearing blinders. Regarding "most difficult".......are you aware of other companies working on something as technologically and logistically and legally challenging as SpaceX and Tesla????
            • warfangle 10y ago
              Google's doing a lot better on the whole self driving front. At least in terms of fatalities per mile.
              • 10y ago
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• stephenitis 10y ago
  "So, in short, Master Plan, Part Deux is: - Create stunning solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage - Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments - Develop a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning - Enable your car to make money for you when you aren't using it" I take this as... Having solar powered superchargers power autonomous semitrucks transporting cargo across america. Having solar powered superchargers power autonomous public buses transporting people around a city. Have my car join a fleet of uber-like autonomous teslas while i'm not using it.
  • manicdee 10y ago
    Note the Tesla focus on solar, since wind power doesn't work so well on Mars :)
    • D_Alex 10y ago
      Neither does solar :(
      • guftagu 10y ago
        Why not?
        • bolasanibk 10y ago
          Distance from sun. At the surface, Mars only gets 60% of energy from Sun as compared to Earth. The dust storms only make it worse.
• SigmundA 10y ago
  Anyone else think AbstractTelsaFactoryFactory?
  • devonkim 10y ago
    AbstractTeslaIndustry is my personal convention in this case.
    • marvin 10y ago
      Aha! But how would you create a TeslaFactoryFactoryFactory?
      • devonkim 10y ago
        AbstractTeslaEconomy. Then it'd be eventually AbstractTeslaNation or AbstractTeslaCivilization depending upon if the class is a singleton. Also, I would probably be evaluating a DI framework long before thinking of anything beyond an Industry. Even an EJB sounds great by that point.
  • dxbydt 10y ago
    Why abstract? Its pretty concrete, so more like TeslaFactoryFactoryImpl.
• aerovistae 10y ago
  To anyone who's paid close attention to Tesla and to Elon's various offhand remarks to the press and on Twitter, this was all easy to see coming, every bit of it. But now that he's confirmed it all officially: this NUTS. This is so awesome. The press is going to go crazy with this. I wonder what will happen to Uber...seems like it will be hard for them to compete with the rates of cars that don't have to pay their driver a living wage, nor pay for gas. Electric semis-- THANK GOD. I live in Chicago and I can't tell you how sick I am of the massive exhaust plumes billowing over me as they pass by, and the roaring of their engines on the street outside my apartment.
  • jonny_eh 10y ago
    Uber's been likely working on self-driving cars, potentially in partnership with Google. What Tesla has as an advantage though, is an assembly line to produce lots of quality cars. In other words, Tesla will likely be ready for the future of transportation before Uber.
    • danhak 10y ago
      Tesla's other advantage is a global fleet that is actively logging millions of real-world miles a day. I don't think that can be understated at this stage.
      • ams6110 10y ago
        As owner of a Tesla is it possible to opt-out of this logging? Or is it a required condition of buying the car?
      • bryanlarsen 10y ago
        Google may have a lot fewer miles, but they're much higher quality miles. The sensor suite on their car is much superior, so they're getting much better data. Even if the eventual Google car uses cheaper sensors, the data they get from the superior sensors helps a lot training the algorithms.
• danhak 10y ago
  I'm on board with most of this. The goals here are obviously ambitious by any standard, and would seem totally absurd if put forth by anyone who didn't happen to berth a private spacecraft with the ISS earlier this morning.
  • 2bitencryption 10y ago
    I've read a fair share of criticisms against Tesla, and many of them are founded on solid points. However, in the grand scheme of things, this really does seem like I am watching history unfold. I don't know if I've ever truly believed the "grand mission statement" of a company before so much as I do Tesla's. Mostly because, when it has come down to it, Musk has proved that he really means it. Silicon Valley has made the joke a billion times of start-ups saying they're trying "To make the world a better place." The difference with Tesla (and probably also SpaceX) is that if they succeed, it seems they really will make the world a better place. ..and probably cement Musk a pretty good paragraph in the history books, it seems.
    • Animats 10y ago
      Well, Microsoft's mission statement was once "A computer on every desk, running Microsoft software." Mission accomplished, 20 years ago.
• themark 10y ago
  "...transition the role of bus driver to that of fleet manager..." Does he really think that ?
  • jonny_eh 10y ago
    He has to say "something"
  • sashk 10y ago
    I hope I will live to use that bus, which won't be handled by driver, who thinks that he is god in the bus and can do whatever he wants while he has steering wheel in his hands. i hope, this will bring few things which will improve my commute: - on time performance (I'm yet to leave bus stop in the morning on-time after about 10 years -- bus is always late); - less traffic in the bus terminal, where drives always make wrong assumption and create traffic where it could have been avoided; - safer commute (not that it isn't safe enough now, but there are drivers who prefer driving way too fast). Oh well, this is only dreams.
• _s 10y ago
  Uber is betting on car manufacturers to have autonomous driving in place, while it builds up a worldwide user base of logistics (moving people and goods from X to Y). It doesn't care if vehicles are driven by a horse or by electricity. Tesla is building the vehicles and energy source for the vehicles, and building the autonomy in to them, but it's betting on a user-base acquisition via hardware (vehicle) ownership and/or eventually some form of subscription to the "Tesla" club. Carbon-based fuel(s) will eventually run out. Tesla via SolarCity will be in an incredible position of offering energy, so I'll be looking at how well their plan of putting Solar on every roof works rather than autonomy / vehicle manufacturing / sales. I think this is likely going to be their make or break asset.
  • FreedomToCreate 10y ago
    Good points except that we are a century, if not centuries from carbon fuel reaching a point where people start to worry. And companies like Toyota are investing in alternatives fuels like Hydrogen, so it not as straight forward as you state for Tesla.
    • tdy721 10y ago
      Most Hydrogen is generated from natural gas today and for the foreseeable future... It's no more an alternative source than Electricity, probably less, because we don't have Nuclear Hydrogen plants.
• paulsutter 10y ago
  > We expect that worldwide regulatory approval will require something on the order of 6 billion miles (10 billion km). Current fleet learning is happening at just over 3 million miles (5 million km) per day. This seems very significant for Tesla vs competitors. Yes Google has a strong technology lead today, but how long will that last when Tesla is collecting more miles of data every day than Google has collected in 5 years? (Sincere question) Not to mention Apple and existing car vendors, who each have 0 million miles of experience. Tesla should reach 6 billion miles very quickly once the model 3 is out.
  • argonaut 10y ago
    What does that data give you? Raw sensor data + steering angle + acceleration/braking is not particularly useful in of itself. Nobody is trying to shove large amounts of data through a blackbox model and directly trying to predict car controls from images. This is not MobileEye's approach and almost certainly isn't Tesla's approach. The bottleneck is data that is decomposed and labeled in greater detail (lane markings, obstacles, bicyclist hand signs, etc) - and you need human annotators for that.
    • astrange 10y ago
      Geohot is pretty much claiming to do that! http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/6/11866868/comma-ai-george-hotz-interview-self-driving-cars http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/6/11866868/comma-ai-george-ho...
      • argonaut 10y ago
        Sure, some people are exploring the approach. This does not mean it works.
    • Meegul 10y ago
      I recommend watching this [0] ted talk on the subject. In it, you'll see that Google, last year, already had solved bicyclist hand signs, lane markings, unforeseen obstacles, etc. And they did it __without__ human annotators. Just some straight up convolution neural networks. [0]: https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_sees_the_road?language=en https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_...
• stephenitis 10y ago
  I hear about bus drivers and truck drivers getting into accidents due to drowsiness enough that it's a constant worry whenever I'm on the highway next to one. I wonder if I'd feel safer if i saw a Tesla Semi knowing that were wasn't a human behind the wheel. Should autonomous vehicles be identified as such (special lights or label) so that real humans can know not to be erratic around it?
  • tamersalama 10y ago
    > Should autonomous vehicles be identified as such (special lights or label) so that real humans can know not to be erratic around it? Great idea. Would do wonders for marketing the capabilities too.
  • sitharus 10y ago
    I don't think they should be identified. Look how drivers treat learners of they're marked - the marking are supposed to indicate 'this driver is inexperienced, be patient and expect them to do the wrong thing' but people treat it as 'please tailgate and honk until they stop out of fear'
  • manachar 10y ago
    This comment reminds me of the various (likely apocryphal) laws when cars were still new and shared the road with cars. Cars we considered the new weird thing that needed to take special steps to not spook horses or their riders/drivers. Now, of course, the situation is reversed and horses often are required to have special visibility gear to be seen more clearly by cars. So, perhaps in the future there will be some sort of indicator light that turns on when the idiot driver turns on manual driving mode so you (edit, or your car!) can give them a wide berth.
    • aerovistae 10y ago
      I think you meant "when cars still shared the road with horses." Right? :)
    • JoshTriplett 10y ago
      > So, perhaps in the future there will be some sort of indicator light that turns on when the idiot driver turns on manual driving mode so you (edit, or your car!) can give them a wide berth. Agreed. Don't mark the autonomous vehicles. Mark the ones to be more concerned about: the ones with a human driving.
• mrfusion 10y ago
  I didn't understand what enables them to get rid of aisles inside buses? People still need to reach their seats right?
  • srunni 10y ago
    The buses could have falcon wing doors, just like the Model X: http://i.imgur.com/40o2Uvd.jpg http://i.imgur.com/40o2Uvd.jpg
    • mrfusion 10y ago
      I'm not seeing it. That seems like a lot of doors to build.
      • cynix 10y ago
        Or one big door for the entire side of the bus…
        • Cthulhu_ 10y ago
          Either way it'd be a lot heavier than the one, two or three doors that buses have these days. But then, weight probably won't be that big of a factor given how it'd need to have a floor full of batteries anyway.
    • ancientworldnow 10y ago
      But then half you lose easy access for the half of seats not on the sidewalk side. There's not a good way to lose the aisle without condensing down to only a couple seats across.
      • eclipxe 10y ago
        One long bench
        • 10y ago
• thucydides 10y ago
  > "When used correctly, [partially autonomous driving] is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves" If you're an American, you're twice as likely to die with a steering wheel in your hands as you are to die at the hands of a murderer. Human-driven vehicle deaths cause grave second-order suffering for families and friends - and hurt the economy. A shift to technologies safer than human-driven cars would dramatically reduce human suffering and should be welcomed. I do wonder, though, how this would reshape our cities - if we're not careful. Besides direct costs for the car, fuel, and maintenance, the main disincentive to driving is how damn boring it is. What happens when we turn fully-autonomous vehicles into luxury entertainment centers? I suspect that, if we're not smart about this shift, we could see wild sprawl on a scale that would dwarf the mid-20th century sprawl we saw in Los Angeles and elsewhere. On the whole, though, it's a beautiful thing.
  • JeffL 10y ago
    Maybe that would be a good thing? Without need for parking, commercial districts could get denser and denser, and people could have nice large homes far away for cheaper than ever. If the cars aren't causing pollution or gridlock, what's so bad about living in the suburbs?
    • wahnfrieden 10y ago
      >If the cars aren't causing pollution There's the rub
    • seanp2k2 10y ago
      Electric cars cause pollution; they run on mostly coal or natural gas and have very toxic-to-mine, manufacture, and dispose-of batteries. They also emit just as much particulate emissions as normal cars: http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/electric-car-particulate-matter/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/electric-car-particulate-m... The way to "save the planet" is to not drive. Driving a 5000# vehicle around thinking you're doing good for the environment is just the marketing genius of the car industry in 2016.
      • 10y ago
• serge2k 10y ago
  > Traffic congestion would improve due to increased passenger areal density by eliminating the center aisle and putting seats where there are currently entryways I don't see how automation reduces the need to get on the bus.
• back_beyond 10y ago
  Master Plan, Part Trois: Solar-powered, autonomous spacecraft.
  • mrfusion 10y ago
    Actually aircraft could be a very real possibility of you read up on his ideas.
• helicon 10y ago
  Forgive me if this is a silly question but when he talks about "beautiful solar-roof-with-battery", is he talking about car roofs or roofs of buildings? An electric car with a solar roof that charges all day would be pretty cool.
  • maxerickson 10y ago
    Buildings. A car roof isn't enough area and isn't pointed in the right direction.
    • tamersalama 10y ago
      Not if it's a trailer.
      • maxerickson 10y ago
        I haven't figured it out, but my intuition is that the increased energy requirements of a tractor trailer mean that there isn't enough area there either. Back of napkin, it looks like you get ~3*15 meters of roof which seems to translate to 10 kW of output under good conditions and then you need something like 150 kW to rumble up the highway.
        • mrfusion 10y ago
          Well trucks still have a lot of low hanging fruit for becoming more aerodynamic. Plus you could use the sides of the trailer for some power too. Finally even if 10kw can't power the truck. It could extend its range by some amount. Plus that's still a significant amount of power you don't need to buy. 2-3 rooftops worth?
          • ams6110 10y ago
            I have thought the same thing -- that trucks could be more aerodynamic. So why aren't they? The economics of freight are such that any measurable improvement in fuel economy is worth a lot. Why do we not see super streamlined semis? Maybe there's some non-obvious reason? I don't know.
• mrfusion 10y ago
  Are there any more details on the factory factory? I didn't understand that part.
  • jrv 10y ago
    Check out this video around 1h22m: https://youtu.be/6WyaO29XDf8 https://youtu.be/6WyaO29XDf8
• freshyill 10y ago
  I feel like there must have been a few pages left off the beginning and this whole post was a summary of an article that doesn't exist. I guess that's just Elon Musk's train of thought.
• esusatyo 10y ago
  It's interesting that they portray self-driving capabilities as something that can be turned on or off, unlike Google's where it's just always on. I think in the long run Google might be building the correct solution for greater number of people.
  • mortenjorck 10y ago
    This is a big part of why we're at such an exciting point with autonomous vehicles: there are several highly promising, meaningfully different methodologies contending right now, including Google's top-down approach, Tesla's incremental approach, and even Comma.ai's maverick pure-learning approach.
• orky56 10y ago
  I was hoping to see another zero to one approach with the master plan where he is taking on some other industry goal. I totally get that part deux is still very, very ambitious and one that no other company can truly realize. But if we're just talking about Musk's master plan, I'm curious why he didn't talk about the synergies with his other company, SpaceX. Tesla and SpaceX both rely on vehicles & transport while SpaceX and Solar City both revolve around innovation in energy/physics. I'm wondering if Tesla's mission/vision will dwarf SolarCity's when solar harvesting in space could be one of many opportunities to partner with SpaceX. /rant
  • aerovistae 10y ago
    I suspect Tesla will move into aircraft and oceancraft in the long-run, if you're interested in "other industries." He's mentioned the electric jet enough times. And why would he create a new company for it when he's got all the expertise and business structure at his fingertips already? Solar harvesting in space sounds really cool, but how do you get that power back to earth? Even if there were a way, it's not necessary or effective. He's said very clearly that you could just have a giant square of solar panels in the desert and it would power the whole country. Why bother putting them in space? No advantage. However, SolarCity IS likely to provide the panels for SpaceX's satellites, of course. So there is that form of solar harvesting in space.
    • ams6110 10y ago
      If there were a way to collect additional solar energy in space and somehow get it back to earth, that is now a net increase in energy, which will ultimately end up as heat, being delivered to the planet. At a large enough scale and over time this would be a global warming contributor. Solar power collected on earth is just using energy that is already being delivered to the surface -- no net change.
      • jnicholasp 10y ago
        At some point we will need to take an active part in regulating the planet's weather and various climates. Orbiting solar panels on orbits that pass between us and the sun, that can be selectively turned edge on, or perpendicular, to the sun, would let us control solar influx to particular surface regions, limiting energy input in specific places while also harvesting that energy and enabling us to put it to use as needed without increasing total energy/heat input.
• dcw303 10y ago
  > Enable your car to make money for you when you aren't using it I really like this, but the laws of supply and demand still apply. If you live in a sparsely populated area there's not going to be much for your car to do. Great for those in urban centres, but then if you lived there why bother owning at all when there will be more cabs to hail?
  • BurningFrog 10y ago
    Someone has to own the cabs.
  • elchief 10y ago
    It's too bad you're forced to live in the wilderness then
• hackguru 10y ago
  I am in no position to question EM. But I was hoping he would give some good explanation for spending resources on SolarCity acquisition but nothing. Nothing in this master plan explains why SolarCity was bought other than some hand wavy explanation about inherent difficulties of two separate companies working together. It still doesn't seem like a good purchase for Tesla specially at the moment. Solar car and SolarCity seem to only have the word solar in common :) TBH I am still fuzzy how expensive purchase of SolarCity can benefit a solar car manufacturing even in long run.
  • jrv 10y ago
    If you're interested in learning more about the reasoning for the SolarCity acquisition, I can recommend listening to the conference call recording about that: http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/makhvjt8 http://edge.media-server.com/m/p/makhvjt8
    • Decade 10y ago
      I see. It’s not just a bailout, to stave off SolarCity’s looming demise, though it is partially about that. It’s also expected to be profitable, because they could consolidate SolarCity’s sales operations into Tesla’s existing showrooms, and sell a complete package that’s more attractive than solar panels or PowerWalls on their own. Not entirely contradictory with my previous guess; being profitable by laying off the sales department is basically saying the company will not soon be profitable by itself; but Musk is so certain that it’s a good deal for the respective companies that he’s promising to recuse himself from the vote. The other interesting aspect is that they don’t expect the sale to close and the details to be official for several months. It’s actually near the beginning of the negotiating process, with due diligence and stuff yet to be done. Since Musk is a large shareholder of both companies, they decided to announce it publicly this early.
  • Decade 10y ago
    That's not what he said. Solar cars are dumb. They're good for tech demos, racing across the Australian Outback on a sunny day in the summer, but useless for normal commutes in traffic. Musk said Tesla has always planned to provide solar energy. SolarCity provides solar energy. The odd part to outsiders is, why now? I think Musk's investment in SolarCity was being threatened by the end of subsidized net metering. He needed to speed up the time table for energy storage to keep the company in business. SolarCity had the solar panels, but Tesla had the batteries. It would be a poor customer experience for SolarCity to have to negotiate with Tesla for the Powerwall, and it would be a waste of time and money for SolarCity to start its own battery sourcing. If Musk could get the market valuation and accelerate the world's weaning from fossil fuels this way, it's a big bonus, but all this leveraging is pretty risky.
• 8note 10y ago
  the question is how to keep those cars clean though
• Animats 10y ago
  "A first principles physics analysis of automotive production suggests that somewhere between a 5 to 10 fold improvement is achievable by version 3 on a roughly 2 year iteration cycle. The first Model 3 factory machine should be thought of as version 0.5, with version 1.0 probably in 2018." What that really means: Tesla is going to lose a ton of money per car on the Model 3, or raise the price, until at least 2022. That's realistic. His two top production guys quit when he announced 2018 as the delivery date for the Model 3. His new production head, from Audi, may have given Musk a reality check. Tesla produced about 50,000 cars in 2015 with 13,000 employees, about 4 cars per employee. Ford produced 3.2 million cars in 2015 with 187,000 employees, about 17 cars per employee. Toyota produced about 9 million cars with 344,000 employees, about 26 cars per employee. So Tesla needs to get their productivity per employee up by 4x - 7x to play with the big guys. Clearly Musk has done the same calculation. Now, though, he's admitting that they can't do it by 2018. This is prepping the stockholders for bad financial news. Tesla is going to burn a lot of cash through at least 2022. There's no reason that Tesla can't get their productivity up to at least Ford levels in time. Ford has a much broader product line, and Tesla's car isn't that complicated mechanically. But it's not instant.
  • CaptSpify 10y ago
    I've only mildly followed him, but I remember hearing he is extremely aggressive with his timelines. Is he normally so far off on his estimates?
    • kilroy123 10y ago
      Yes
    • mark-r 10y ago
      A certain amount of optimism is a necessary prerequisite of being an entrepreneur. Nobody would ever do it if they knew from the start how hard it would be.
    • mikeash 10y ago
      The standard joke is that Elon runs on Mars time, so "1 year" for him is about 1.9 standard years.
• stcredzero 10y ago
  A first principles physics analysis of automotive production suggests... This is the part I really want to see.
• amluto 10y ago
  Master plan part one made sense: it all lead to Tesla as it is today. But master plan part deux seems odd: what exactly does "One ordering experience, one installation, one service contact, one phone app" for solar have to do with the Tesla transportation part?
  • qaq 10y ago
    batteries :)
    • amluto 10y ago
      Could you clarify? Tesla needs batteries. SolarCity does not need batteries except in jurisdictions that make having a battery significantly favorable over having one. Also, the high energy density batteries that Tesla needs are, IMO, mostly unnecessary for stationary use. Compare Powerwall prices to lead-acid -- lead-acid wins hands down. Sure, the lead acid batteries are heavy, but that's not a problem if you plunk them in the basement or crawlspace.
• cpwright 10y ago
  I'm very curious what the pickup offering will be like, and compare to existing offerings from the big 3, since it is a "a new kind of pickup truck". I think the segment of the pickup market that is mostly an SUV, but occasionally needs to haul/tow stuff could be well served by Tesla. They also have plans for a semi, so maybe they'll actually be able to compete for actual work trucks that haul/tow on a regular basis too; but the energy density of the battery compared to gasoline/diesel makes me doubtful.
• j0e1 10y ago
  Haven't seen such a clean, crisp plan that has been implemented flawlessly by a company. Makes me reconsider how I should think the next time I'm asked to write a vision/mission statement for anything-company/product.
  • mulcahey 10y ago
    Now let's just wait and see if SpaceX's full vision comes to fruition.
• untilHellbanned 10y ago
  Its so rubegoldbergtastic it puts all other successful entrepreneurs in history to shame, which is to say I'm incredibly bearish on it.
• ams6110 10y ago
  My points of skepticism: 1. Semis. A typical long haul semi gets well under 10MPG. In some cases not much more than half that. They are heavy and need a lot of energy to move. A Tesla Model S weighs 4650 lbs and has a range of a couple of hundred miles. A semi truck can weigh up to 80,000 lbs. That is a lot of weight to get rolling and a lot to pull up a grade. Semis spend a large part of their time driving at highway speeds where air resistance is at a maximum. To achieve useful performance an electric semi will need a lot of batteries which will reduce its cargo capacity (Federal law regulates the maximum gross weight), which reduces its value to freight companies. 2. Autonomy. I think this will take a lot longer to achieve than planned, both technically and socially. 3. Enable your car to make money for you. I don't want anyone using my car. Legal liability is one reason. As owner of the car, I am liable for damage it causes. So legal liability laws will have to change. If I need to go somewhere, and my car is not here, I don't want to wait for another one. I don't want to get my car back from another user and find food wrappers strewn about and used condoms under the seat. I feel that my car is an extension of my home. It's personal space that I don't want to share with random strangers. YMMV.
  • chinhodado 10y ago
    Agree with part 3. I fail to see why anyone who is willing to pay a premium for a Tesla car would be willing to let random strangers into their (new) car, unless the benefits far outweighs the cost/risks, but in that case, if the other car user has to pay a high price to use a Tesla for his commute, why not just use Uber instead? This can probably only work when the car is old such that its value has already been depreciated significantly.
    • arcticfox 10y ago
      That's the point: it's for people that want to own a Tesla but can't afford it. Not for people that can afford to own a Tesla and have it sit idle waiting for them 90% of the time (like all of today's owners).
      • mjevans 10y ago
        For those that can afford it, they can send the car back for family to use.
• kilroy123 10y ago
  > We expect that worldwide regulatory approval will require something on the order of 6 billion miles (10 billion km). Current fleet learning is happening at just over 3 million miles (5 million km) per day. So he is essentially say, in at most five in a half years, they'll be ready for fully self driving cars?
  • mrtron 10y ago
    He is saying the government will be ready to approve them then.
• d_t_w 10y ago
  "Coal is the future" - Tony Abbott, Australian PM, 2014. There are many things to take from Musk's master plan part deux, but the most important for me is the intent and aspiration. I live in Australia, the leadership here is absolutely dire both political and economic. A relentless cycle of vested mining interests and climate change deniers espousing at length on the cattle exports to Asia suffering if marriage equality is passed. Maybe Musk succeeds, maybe not, but here's someone with vision, a plan, and he's going to have a fair swing at it.
  • vacri 10y ago
    Abbott is the last person anyone should quote to support an argument. He wasn't voted in; the other party was voted out. His policy for everything was "No!", and once in power, found out that "No!" didn't cut it anymore. He did do a lot of damage, but his leadership was so bad that he was ejected by his own party in his first term despite them using that 'they ejected in first term!' argument in their election campaign to win power. That's kind've promising, actually... the party was worried about the public enough that they'd eject a lunatic leader. The leadership here isn't dire, it's just boring (in global terms) and a bit of a soap opera. The country is still a great place to live. If you look beyond the media, there is leadership - for example, in Gillard's tenure, more articles of legislation were passed than in any previous government, including some key items, despite the media loudly claiming (with plenty of misogyny) that the minority government was hamstrung and paralysed. Turnbull is not the guy I want in right now, but his leadership is hardly 'dire'. Besides, if you use 'dire' for something as beige as Turnbull, what have you got left for something like Erdogan's latest activities in Turkey?
    • d_t_w 10y ago
      "He wasn't voted in; the other party was voted out" He won the 2013 federal election as the leader of the Liberals, that's fairly conclusive. "The leadership here isn't dire" We disagree. "Besides, if you use 'dire' for something as beige as Turnbull, what have you got left for something like Erdogan's latest activities in Turkey?" Criminal? The question is whataboutery.
• bane 10y ago
  I'm always surprised when we get insight into Musk's plan, not because they're complicated but because they always come across as "no duh, why aren't we already doing these things? weren't we already on track to do these things decades ago?" As much as the Internet transformed society, I also can't help but feel like we were on the track to have achieved these things and got distracted by our global communications and selfie-cat picture delivery network and are only now starting to come to our senses as the ubiquity has occurred and the ecosystem of necessary applications has become fleshed out, matured and developed a commercial angle. If you look at his pre-hardware days, he built basically a e-phonebook when paper phonebooks were still all the rage and a couple payment companies. Both no-duh companies in hindsight. Musk's plans feel like he's taking a derailed train, applying some common sense grease (solar panels on electric cars? MADNESS! Reusable rocket stages instead of throwing away the entire ship? ~~CRAZY!~~) and getting our civilization going again. He's also really really public about his plans and telegraphs his moves years in advance...and yet very few seem able to execute anywhere near his league. I sometimes feel if things had shaken out differently and Steve Jobs was younger than Musk and was running a successful Apple, Musk might try to recruit him with a "do you want to sell cat picture delivery boxes for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?" I don't know if Musk is going to succeed in the long run, and I hope serious competition finally shows up (because that makes each of his industries healthier), but seriously, it's about fucking time.
  • clintonb 10y ago
    Tesla and SpaceX required a lot of startup capital (relative to most other technology startups). Yes, their ideas are simple, but few people have the capital to implement those ideas. Additionally, the existing players in the rocket market didn't have much incentive to innovate given how few players there were. Your guess is as good as mine on why the automobile industry didn't continue much EV research after the 90s.
    • pm90 10y ago
      Its the same reason why Kodak invented the first digital camera and didn't put it in the market. We see the same pattern over and over again and if you work at any of these huge corporations, you understand that the main duty of the executives is to protect their profit centers at all costs. Any product that is capable of cannibalizing on the profit centers will face a tough road to success and at the worst, get culled early. Then a startup comes along, reinvents or polishes that product and is very successful. Eventually it turns into a BigCo. And the cycle repeats.
• greendestiny 10y ago
  "I should add a note here to explain why Tesla is deploying partial autonomy now, rather than waiting until some point in the future. The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability." That's a hell of a statement and I want to see much better stats than that. Just looking at the total distance per death in human driven cars and comparing it to the autopilot total distance is a gross simplification. At an absolute minimum you have to start by only comparing driving on similar roads. Tesla simply keeps hiding behind 'if used correctly' which includes the driver being alert and ready to take over - if we restrict human driving stats to similarly ideal conditions the accident rate will also drop. Additionally driver demographics is a big deal as is the safety features of the car itself.
  • greendestiny 10y ago
    Here's a probably equally badly made statistic. Tesla estimates their cars had driven 130 million autopilot miles before the fatality. Some googling suggests the first non-autopilot Tesla S fatality was in july 2014 and this graph ( http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Tesla-Model-S-One-Billion-Miles-Line-Graph-june-2015.jpg http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Tesla-Model-... ) suggests that was around 400 million miles driven. So the autopilot is 3.33 times 'worse'? Who knows, but if Tesla feels they have a moral duty to leave on autopilot if it is safer, they equally have one if it is more dangerous. It seems they are pretty happy to be in dark about which it is while they test their system.
    • cubaia 10y ago
      In other words, if you're a Tesla driver, you're safer driving the car yourself than driving it with autopilot.
      • tim333 10y ago
        I get that impression from the stats. They say the autopilot is ok if you keep an eye on it but in the real world people won't always - I think the guy who died was watching a movie. On the other hand about 1 million people die each year in driving accidents so if by winging it a bit you can stop that a year earlier it's a million lives saved vs maybe <10 autonomous deaths in the research phase.
• lsllc 10y ago
  My favorite quote: "Starting a car company is idiotic and an electric car company is idiocy squared."
  • ams6110 10y ago
    Well honestly, the entire plan can be read as either the work of a highly ambitious genious or a raving madman.
• DrNuke 10y ago
  Nice plan, good luck! If that happens, though, I can't see why owning a car at all, ten to twenty years from now: just make an enormous fleet of electric unmanned buses running up and down every major road on Earth, uh? No jams, no accidents, only a regular and pre-determined flow of vehicles. One planet, one network.
• caf 10y ago
  I would have thought you'd want to go for delivery vans before semi-trailers.
• femto 10y ago
  > via massive fleet learning Is Tesla going to make this data freely available, to accelerate the development of safer autonomous driving software? Given that it's "morally reprehensible to delay release" of autopilot, it is also morally reprehensible not to publicly release such data if more groups working on the task will lead to safer software.
  • dpcx 10y ago
    Likely. They gave away all of their patents (https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you), so it's likely they'd be willing to share this data.
    • fudged71 10y ago
      But they aren't sharing their accident data...
• plcancel 10y ago
  If this article is accurate, the Master Plan, Part Un narrative is a bit more nuanced. http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/tesla_is_worse_than_solyndra_how_the_u_s_government_bungled_its_investment.html http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/tesl...
• pdq 10y ago
  I still don't understand the SolarCity part. Tesla is atop the best rated electric cars, and has a good trajectory toward that product line future, with lots of innovation ahead. Successful companies like Apple focus on best-in-class products, so Tesla is smart to continue focusing their resources into those product lines. Meanwhile SolarCity has been burning cash on a consistent basis [1], and is sitting in a hyper competitive solar panel industry, where I don't see their competitive advantage. It seems foolish to bring that business inside of Tesla, as if it failed, the debt risk would now affect Tesla's future. As many others have mentioned, a long term licensing deal or partnership avoids those risks. [1] http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/musk-says-solarcity-deal-about-synergy-but-it-may-be-about-debt/ar-AAhu9vZ http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/musk-says-solarcity...
  • mtgx 10y ago
    I think time will tell if the movement proves "foolish". However, there is one reason why this makes sense. Storage batteries and solar panels will go hand in hand for the vast majority of sales. So it makes sense for Tesla to want to control that half of the "solution" for renewable energy generation.
  • parasdpain 10y ago
    Agreed but I feel Musk is not here to do a business; he is here to fix humanity. Normal logic does not apply on him, just like when he used all his earnings from selling Paypal and decided to start a roket company (SpaceX)! Other enterpreneurs literally laughed at him and called him crazy.
    • deleted 10y ago
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    • gkya 10y ago
      Oh he is the SV Messiah? Honestly enterprise is enterprise. Look what Google have become.
      • TeMPOraL 10y ago
• jzawodn 10y ago
  The most interesting bit, to me, was: "Enable your car to make money for you when you aren't using it" Things are gonna get real interesting in the auto world in the next few years, aren't they?
  • Dowwie 10y ago
    yes indeed, and not just autos
• soheil 10y ago
  I'm wondering what the effect of this plan will be on Uber.
  • Axsuul 10y ago
    It would seem Tesla's ride sharing service is more about getting more of the public into a Tesla with a side effect of selling more cars. Electric vehicles aren't essential to autonomous ride sharing--market share and technology are. Uber's app is already installed in orders of magnitude more phones than Tesla right now.
    • ryanelkins 10y ago
      A ride in an autonomous vehicle should be far less expensive than a ride in a manually driven Uber vehicle. If the end goal for both is a fleet of autonomous vehicles and a strong app to facilitate the use of that fleet by the public, I would much rather be in Tesla's position. Having a fleet and needing to create an app sounds a lot more promising than having an app but no fleet. Tesla will be able to get an app up and running far sooner than Uber will be able to get a fleet.
• maxander 10y ago
  Elon Musk is like the cat who tried to jump from the sofa to the top of the bookcase, fell to the floor in a tangle of wildly gyrating limbs, and is now sitting there quietly licking its paw like it was intending to do that all along. Even with his brilliance he's fooling no one into thinking the SolarCity merger was actually in his plan- there are some synergies, sure, but they're easily outweighed by the added corporate complexity. But I mean, he's Elon Musk. He could still pull it off. His biggest problem by far (excepting, perhaps, Model 3 production targets) will be regulations. It makes a nice story when you talk about the relative risks rationally, but there's no chance whatsoever American politics will deal with the issue in a rational fashion. Autopilot may retroactively become illegal in places people currently get away with it; cars driving themselves around is a different and titanic can of worms. What if a terrorist gets their hands on a Tesla and stuffs it full of explosives?
  • swalsh 10y ago
    I don't completely buy into the idea it was intentional, but I think there's a really good possibility. Especially at the beginning, people questioned if electric cars were better for the environment or just shifting the source of the pollution. His response was that electric is a flexible energy source that can be generated from many different processes, many of which are very environmentally friendly including solar. I think SolarCity is part 2, now that cars are running on electricity, it's time to make the electricity clean.
  • tokipin 10y ago
    The specifics probably weren't in his plan, but in various interviews he's talked about the consumption of energy (vehicles) and the generation of energy (solar) as being two sides of the same coin. Elon is the one that told his cousins to start a solar company after all. IIRC he originally saw three major fields to move forward on: the Internet, Transportation/Energy, and Space. By the sounds of it he was thinking of these as early as high school, to at the latest some time after he sold his first company (Zip2). He did the Internet thing pretty well, now he's working on the other two. This is someone who does think on these scales. Keep in mind, as the article itself points out, that you're an idiot if you think starting a car company is a good idea. Energy was the whole point all along. A company for its own sake isn't in Elon's DNA. That would probably just be too boring for him. Whether this specific merger is a good idea or not is a different question. And I also don't think the emergence of cheap supercomputers in the form of geek-subsidized graphics cards and their applicability to a particularly effective machine learning genre would have been predicted by anyone.
• rukittenme 10y ago
  > Enable your car to make money for you when you aren't using it Gives "pimp my ride" a whole new meaning.
• mshenfield 10y ago
  Less of a master plan, and more a list of goals. The original was awesome because it clearly laid what Tesla wanted to accomplish "Consumer electric vehicles" and how. This just lays out the what.
  • dave1619 10y ago
    Agree. The first plan laid out the chronological steps to reach the goal. This second plan is more scattered.
• lebca 10y ago
  and post Tesla acquisition of SpaceX, Master Plan: Part Tres Solar powered flying cars that will take you to Mars and beyond.
• suprgeek 10y ago
  Obscured under " Develop a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning " is the cold hard truth that that learning will be paid for in lives - mostly of Tesla drivers possibly of others. The rates of accidents in manual vs current version of autopilot may work out to be favorable - (and that is still under debate) - but there certainly will be people who will die (and have died) due to a premature roll-out of Autopilot and their trust of it. This is some bloody cold calculation
  • gozur88 10y ago
    While it's true people are going to die on autopilot, what you need to compare it with is the number of people who would otherwise have caused collisions the autopilot avoided. Statistically if it isn't already safer than the average driver it's very close. There are 1.5 million heart attacks and strokes in the US every year. Self driving cars might end up being safer even if we were all perfect drivers.
    • deleted 10y ago
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  • pjscott 10y ago
    Refusal to do such cold calculation, though it may feel nice, is also paid for in lives. The prices are usually worse, too.
  • mahyarm 10y ago
    So you will let perfect get in the way of better?
• rjdevereux 10y ago
  Why is residential solar important to the plan? Aren't large solar installations a more cost effective way of switching houses already on the grid to solar energy.
  • deleted 10y ago
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  • abalone 10y ago
    Adoption. By offering a standalone solution that can be adopted at the grassroots level they hope to drive adoption faster than any other way. This is why they're including batteries instead of telling customers to feed excess energy back into the grid. Feeding into the grid is technically more efficient and doesn't require all those batteries, but does require the headache of interfacing with your local utility.
• lowglow 10y ago
  Last year I pitched Playa (http://getplaya.com/ http://getplaya.com/) at Launch conference and was laughed off stage by Jason Calacanis. My example use of the technology was that your autonomous vehicle would be able to contract itself out as an 'uber', earning you money while you slept. Today Tesla announced that this is part of its plans for the future and everyone is going wild. We're now going a step further and building a next-gen interface for that autonomous future. ‪#‎Asteria‬. http://getasteria.com/ http://getasteria.com/
  • puranjay 10y ago
    The problem with your idea was that it wasn't SOCIAL or VIRAL or could leverage SEO, like Jason likes his businesses ;)
• mitul_45 10y ago
  Tesla should buy Uber to manager all booking, locating taxis and other stuff. Then it would be badass combination!
• sonink 10y ago
  If I am on a self-driving car and it meets with an accident, there might be a case to be made against Tesla if I consider myself a very safe driver. Even though on an average self-driving might cause less casualties but that figure might not hold good compared to what my personal accident rate is. And this should be good enough for law enforcement to nail Tesla. I think, like everyone else, that Musk is probably the smartest entrepreneurs of our time. In this case though, maybe he is over his head a bit: - Getting Tesla 3 to production volume will not be easy. - Autopilot is NOT good enough to be used in production. This can be fatal to Tesla if FCC catches up. Tesla needs to quit Autopilot and focus only on getting Tesla 3 out. Tesla 3 will face competition sooner rather than later and market dominance is not guaranteed. - SolarCity has absolutely no synergies with this business. It should be sold off. - SpaceX is again a distraction given how hard it will be for Tesla 3 to roll off.
  • LAMike 10y ago
    Will be fun to revisit your comment in 10 years
    • sonink 10y ago
      I won't mind being wrong at all, and I have been wrong before. But this is what I feel about the whole thing right now. There are real issues with driverless cars and google has scaled back for this very reason. Elon is very smart, but even Jobs didnt get it right with Next.
• deleted 10y ago
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• sidcool 10y ago
  A digression from the mainstream discussion. I woke up this morning feeling sullen (many factors involved). I didn't feel like going to work. I could hardly get out of bed. I just sat for a few minutes staring in the vacuumn. Something told me to check Hacker News (I am trying to avoid it in morning), and the top link was this. I went through it twice. It instilled hope and enthusiasm in me. I woke up in an instant and rushed to work to do great stuff. Thanks for the article I am typing this at work, else would have wasted the day filled with self-loathing and despair. Hang in there guys, it gets better. Do Great Stuff.
  • mulcahey 10y ago
    If you liked that go read Elon's biography or the WaitButWhy series!
    • adwn 10y ago
      A link for the lazy, the first part of the Elon Musk series on Wait But Why: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-man.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-m...
  • ams6110 10y ago
    You might want to seek some help. Unless you're just being dramatic here for effect, there are some red flags in your post such as not being able to get out of bed, being filled with self-loathing and despair, etc.
    • tyre 10y ago
      I'll second this. Having suffered from chronic depression for decades, those symptoms are very familiar. While there are always ups and downs in life, general disconnection with the world would be good to dig deeper into.
      • agumonkey 10y ago
        I just realized the other pill beside magnesium complement my doctor prescribed to me was an anti anxiety pill (didn't know the name, thought it was a muscle relaxant). I have to admit that it made my mood smooth, and got out of bed in a way that I didn't since a year. Damn brain.
• rbosinger 10y ago
  I have stock in Solar City and I don't care if I lose it all. It's not my life savings though. I invested because I enjoy day dreaming a similar dream to what Musk must be dreaming. Like any great science we just have to try and be excited, together. We can all banter about economics, rationality and history but I'm stoked. Who cares. I don't see how Tesla or SolarCity failing would lead to mass starvation or anything so let's strap in and be pumped!
• sp527 10y ago
  I'm genuinely surprised at the quality of Musk's writing and the presentation of certain ideas. He clearly insisted against copyediting, and that was probably a mistake judging by the output. I suspect that he was attempting to eschew the formality of typical press releases, but this 'Master Plan' (which is itself a somewhat juvenile moniker) feels like something that warranted rigor.
  • d23 10y ago
    I can't figure out what you're trying to say. You think it's bad he wrote it himself, or good? Are you saying his writing it himself was a mistake, or wasn't? And it does or doesn't sound formal enough? It needs rigor and doesn't have it, or it does have it?
    • sp527 10y ago
      He should have written it with more formality and more rigor. Tesla is a public company and there is already a perception among investors that this is a facade. Musk needs to reposition Tesla as less of a personal experiment/quest and more of a legitimate enterprise that acknowledges its fiduciary duty to its shareholders. Tone and communication are very important in this regard. This release failed to adopt a tone and style of communication commensurate with the severity of Tesla's present situation. Instead, it feels like Musk is treating Tesla as he might a startup. In short, he's being facetious. I doubt the stock will plummet as a result of this, but it was certainly a missed opportunity to reassure investors.
      • LAMike 10y ago
        Tone, rigor, formality? This is the same guy joking about smoking crack and listening to Tupac while writing this plan, I don't think he really cares about making a good impression to anyone
        • sp527 10y ago
          Yea. The point is maybe he should care if he's running a company whose market capitalization is related to investor perceptions. Time will tell I guess. And, Tesla may still prevail.
• unabst 10y ago
  Tesla isn't a car company. It's building Rome. All great "startups" are not some good idea executed well. They are companies with a long term vision that generate ideas to execute that will get them there. Anyone might steal an idea or copy a product, but no one can steal a mission or a destination far in the future. Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Yahoo, Google... all started as or at some point became "build Rome" companies.
  • whatever_dude 10y ago
    After reading this master plan yesterday, I came to work today thinking along the same lines. I feel like Musk's actions are a great example of McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message". Tesla is not a car company. They're doing cars because it's a way into their actual business. He wants them to invest in solar power because it's another way that ties into a general plan.
• deleted 10y ago
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• dredmorbius 10y ago
  For rates of process and cost improvement with scale, look to J. Doyne Farmer's work, and particularly Wright's Law (Moore's Law is a special case, and less accurate), which looks at cost improvements with volume increase through learning functions. http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/at-work/test-and-measurement/wrights-law-edges-out-moores-law-in-predicting-technology-development http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/at-work/test-and-measurem... http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1263107 http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1263107 http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0052669#pone.0052669-Alberth1 http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna... http://www.santafe.edu/research/working-papers/abstract/0650f0fb526862cb048a74a33c5417ac/ http://www.santafe.edu/research/working-papers/abstract/0650...
• puranjay 10y ago
  This is just mind blowing to me. This man is dreaming the future. Nay, he is building the future.
• crypticlizard 10y ago
  So tesla is in the business of making Model 3 factory factories.
• thruflo22 10y ago
  Car roof or house roof?
  • aembleton 10y ago
    House roof.
• lazyjones 10y ago
  Battery-powered trucks and buses seem like a logical next step, since there's not much competition there yet (save some obscure small players) and weight is less of an issue. [I'd still like to own a fully autonomous mobile home that drives me to work while I am eating breakfast in my bath robe or taking a shower and then moves me to a beach while I'm sleeping on Friday nights. Well, one can hope, right?]
• 3327 10y ago
  So how do we go work for Elon if we have particular expertise on the Solar and storage part - particularly in the way that he has mentioned here?
• Tloewald 10y ago
  I think the fundamental error here is assuming the existing car ownership model. I think the future is autonomous taxis (or Ubers). This actually reduces congestion, eliminates the need for parking, and plays to the strengths of electric vehicles. Building a master plan based on families owning cars is, I think, skating to where the puck was ten years ago (car ownership is dropping in the Western world, especially among the young).
  • eridius 10y ago
    If you send out your car to ferry other people for money when you don't need it (as the master plan suggests) then you get the same benefits.
    • Tloewald 10y ago
      Except you need to worry about maintenance, insurance, etc. and you may not be able to use the car when you need it. Why bother?
      • eridius 10y ago
        There's tradeoffs everywhere. Sure, if your car is out giving someone else a ride, it can't give you one either. But most of the time when you get in your car, you know ahead of time that you're going to do that, so it's pretty easy to tell your car to become available when you need it. And the benefits to owning it include having it available exactly when you need it (instead of having to call a car and stand around waiting for it to come pick you up), having it be able to sit around on standby for if you don't know if you're going to need it or not, or personalization of your car, etc. Similarly, if you're regularly driving longer distances than just hopping around San Francisco, it's probably more cost-effective to own a car than to use Uber. And once you go outside of major metropolitan areas there's a lot less coverage by ridesharing services, and it's reasonable to expect there to still be low coverage by Uber-owned autonomous vehicles.
  • mvdwoord 10y ago
    This only works in well connected/urban areas though. Waiting for 15 minutes or longer whenever you need to get somewhere is not acceptable for a lot of people. Also, cars act as mobile lockers for your stuff. Etc. Autonomous taxi's will supplement the car owner model, but that model in and of itself is not going anywhere. Don't underestimate the aversion people have for "public" transport, many people I know bend over backwards to not use a shared form of transportation.
• davnicwil 10y ago
  > increased passenger areal density [on buses] by eliminating the center aisle and putting seats where there are currently entryways I can't picture the layout he's describing here - not sure if it's been discussed in more detail elsewhere - anyone got a better idea or a reference image?
  • hrnnnnnn 10y ago
    The only way I could imagine it, is if it was describing a much smaller bus than we're currently used to, which I think he also mentions.
• kybernetikos 10y ago
  > The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability. I don't think this is the correct comparison. A car used correctly is safe. We have huge numbers of road accidents because most people are unable to reliably use a car correctly. The value of an 'autopilot' functionality is that it should be much better at using the car correctly in the real world than a human. What matters is not how many accidents result when using autopilot 'correctly', but how many accidents result from using autopilot in the real world. Also, because autopilot is primarily used on particular road profiles, it's not fair to compare accidents per autopilot mile directly with accidents per human driver mile. You need to adjust for the fact that autopilot is not used during more complex driving anyway. I'd be very interested to know what the statistics are for those, since the recent press has given me a (potentially incorrect) impression that autopilot has lead to a relatively large number of serious accidents compared to the number of cars deployed.
  • tikl1 10y ago
    Humans are the very definition of imperfection and thinking that you are capable of "correctly using a car" that is, never make the mistake that will cause a terrible accident is a big problem. It's probably why so much people keep resisting evolution like autopilot, they can't admit that even them can someday fail and crash. They believe that if they are good drivers they will avoid it. Sadly very good drivers die every day and not only because of someone else's mistake. Of course a computer or a machine can fail too, but in comparison it will never fail as often as human do. Because we can be careless, sleepy, drunk, unskilled,... Now the real problem we will face (what scares me even though I'm pro-autopilot) is to accept to hand our lives to machines that will have to make choices in emergency situations (should it saves its owner or the kids in front of it ?, who is responsible in case of a crash ?,...)
    • greendestiny 10y ago
      "but in comparison it will never fail as often as human do" Ok I know this is my little cause of the moment, but seriously why are computers apriori better at anything? Sure they don't make poor life choices but they are absolutely at the mercy of the quality of the algorithms, sensors, operating system, training data and physical computational hardware.
• thatfrenchguy 10y ago
  "In addition to consumer vehicles, there are two other types of electric vehicle needed: heavy-duty trucks and high passenger-density urban transport" Where I'm from, we call that trains.
  • draxofavalon 10y ago
    Hyperloop will be what we used to call trains.
    • thatfrenchguy 10y ago
      I'll believe it when it will ship :-). Meanwhile, most of Europe, Japan and China has a really cool high-speed working train system and suburban trains that really work. I remember how shocked I was when I first when into the NYC subway. And don't start me on BART or MUNI in SF, those are awful.
• shasheene 10y ago
  Hopefully Tesla will be able to achieve this new plan. Looking back at the first 'master plan' from 2006, it's clear that it failed pretty badly as Tesla Motors wasn't close to being able to self fund its goals over that time. Since the first master plan was published in 2006, Tesla Motors has raised money privately (during its near death experience in 2008), sold a 10% stake to Daimler (which was recently divested), went public which has a side effect of raising even more (though the main reason to IPO in most cases liquidity to existing investors), and since then have continually raised money from the public market every year or two. There's probably private and public capital raisings since 2006 that I'm forgetting too (and they raised other capital streams like debt, such as the DoE loan) The very lofty stock price of Tesla in recent years has helped it fund Model S, Model X and Model 3 designs, development, manufacturing (at large scales) and delivery, as well as the building of a large battery factory which Tesla owns a stake in. This constant fund raising has kept Tesla alive and I don't argue that it was very good corporate governance by Elon Musk and team to get Tesla Motors to where it is now (approaching the delivery date for the first Model 3 shipments and having a huge capacity to manufacture battery packs). However, it's still a failure in its attempt to bootstrap the funding of Model 3 based on sales of previous models. Of course, Tesla and SpaceX has consistently ended up achieving great things, even if the timeline is optimistic and the budget ends up blowing out. But issuing stock and eventually debt can only stretch Tesla so far. Hopefully Tesla can become a more sustainable business before that happens.
  • codeulike 10y ago
    Was self funding ever part of the plan? One can take it for granted that the company has to survive economically for the plan to work, but besides that why say the plan must be funded in a particular way?
    • shasheene 10y ago
      Yes, self-funding was a definitely the core part of the plan. Here's the original "master plan" text from 2006 [1] Build sports car Use that money to build an affordable car Use *that* money to build an even more affordable car While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options Don't tell anyone. I think the term "that money" ('that' is italicized in the original) is pretty clear he means funding from the profits of the prior models. (Elon Musk has definitely articulated the funding thing in interviews.) Also, the summary Elon Musk has just posted continues using the same italicized emphasis: Create a low volume car, which would necessarily be expensive Use that money to develop a medium volume car at a lower price Use *that* money to create an affordable, high volume car [1] https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just-between-you-and-me https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-j...
• firewalkwithme 10y ago
  The footer is covering the entire page in my glorious IE11 browser
• ilamont 10y ago
  Once we get to the point where Autopilot is approximately 10 times safer than the US vehicle average, the beta label will be removed Musk misreads the public's attitude about vehicle safety. Human error is understandable, mechanical failure is unacceptable. Society can live with 10 people driving themselves off a cliff (and blame the drivers, road conditions, or poor signage) but they will not accept a car driving its trusting passengers off a cliff.
  • s_dev 10y ago
    What about all the autonomous trams, trains and buses already in existence? If the public genuinely thought that way they wouldn't exist already. Tesla is just bringing more scale to what we already have in parts of Europe and I'm sure the US too. I don't think Musk has misread public attitude towards safety but rather hit the nail on the head. Such vehicles don't need to be perfect just significantly safer than people.
  • oldmanjay 10y ago
    I don't think you understand society as much as you think you do. Most people won't care at all, because that's just how people are.
  • macns 10y ago
    The public's attitude is slowly changing in favor of machines. By the time autopilot is super-safe, self-driving car passengers will probably feel like passengers of an airplane or a river boat; yes there are risks of not driving yourself but the benefits greatly overcome those.
• Shivetya 10y ago
  Can we talk about what I see as the most important driving force behind acceptance of full or partial electrification of transportation? Heavy duty and transport. Specifically I think Tesla would be best off getting school buses to full EV or even partial EV capability. Using a Cobb County Georgia as an example, stats posted awhile ago listed over a thousand school buses traveling almost seventy thousand miles a day. Seventy thousand miles a day! Since the buses have to load/unload at schools and such its easy to establish charging points to include fast top offs where five or six minutes of charging can extend enough to the next time. Then between major routes, elementary, middle, and high school, longer charge periods can be done. Get kids and parents used to silent electric buses and you go a long way to establishing a generation on them. Get autopilot to work well in that environment and you get to sell them on two innovations at once
• restalis 10y ago
  Hey, Musk, small nitpick: I think when you say „inertial impedance” you're actually referring to „mechanical impedance”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_impedance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_impedance
• k__ 10y ago
  Somehow these discussions about human driven cars feel like the discussions about smoking or owning a gun to me. The world could be a better place for so many people, but somehow a bunch of other people think it's okay to continue doing them until they die.
  • yoo1I 10y ago
    > The world could be a better place for so many people, but somehow a bunch of other people think it's okay to continue doing them until they die. The other day I came across an article in which a school prohibited their students clapping when cheering, instead making the cheer in quiet with a fistpump or something like that. The stated reason for this was that some of their pupils were noise sensitive and it made them feel bad/anxious/terrified. Now, regardless of whether this particular story is true like that, it illustrates something interesting. There is a whole bag of human behavior that has the possibility to affect their environment negatively. I would go so far to say > Being alive is an interruption to your environment You can't not be a nuisance. Nor should you strive to be. That doesn't mean you should be as annoying as possible to everyone you meet, but it means to recognize that we live in a society in which people are different, and specifically to your point, have different trade-offs when it comes to acceptable risk and freedom. That you have different trade-offs doesn't give you a moral high-ground, over people "thinking it's ok until they die". And I'm not totally relativist here, I think there should be limits and that some trade-offs are wrong. It's just that that goes both ways between recklessly irresponsible and fascist government limiting everything dangerous, and there is a lot of space in between the two.
    • k__ 10y ago
      so true. I'm a left-wing guy, but the older I get the more I have the feeling, getting my life rid of socalist projects (public healthcare, retirment funds, etc) lets me live a more lefty life, haha.
• OliverJones 10y ago
  Fleets, Mr. Musk. Centrally owned fleets of vehicles, where you can make your sales case based on total cost of system ownership rather than sex appeal. It's a tall order, but can you set your sights on those "long life vehicles" presently used by the US Postal Service in urban and suburban areas, or maybe similar vehicles in Europe. Those machines return to base daily and usually are unused at least 8 hr/day. Massive buildings with large roofs. Cop cars. Lots of slow speed cruising combined with a very occasional need for high speed and agility. Return to base every shift. Location awareness. These sales cycles will be long, and probably a pain in the neck for your major account teams. But you're in it for the long haul. From the owner of Model S #146761
• Dowwie 10y ago
  Note his last point: Enable your car to make money for you when you aren't using it. I suspect Tesla won't be alone in that space. Good luck to those who are.
• mgoldberg524 10y ago
  a
• deleted 10y ago
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• Tiktaalik 10y ago
  The best part of this is automated semi trucks. I think that's the perfect sort of business for Tesla to be in. I have a lot of trouble understanding the public transportation part. The ideas presented fall apart when you remove the baffling assumption that traffic congestion decreases with the introduction of autonomous vehicles. Autonomous vehicles will expand the possible set of drivers. That will dramatically increase the amount of vehicles on the road. If anything our future with autonomous vehicles will be unbearable gridlock.
  • TillE 10y ago
    No, look at the whole system. Instead of four people with four cars (or even two cars and a couple bikes), you can have one autonomous shared cab driving an optimized route.
    • Tiktaalik 10y ago
      This assumes that everyone is sharing cars. What if they don't? Then you simply have what we have now plus the addition of people who otherwise wouldn't be able to drive (people without licenses, 13 year olds, 80 year olds etc).
• Double_Cast 10y ago
  > A first principles physics analysis of automotive production suggests that somewhere between a 5 to 10 fold improvement is achievable by version 3 on a roughly 2 year iteration cycle. How does one calculate this? Does there exist some canonical Productivity-Equation?
• Evgeny 10y ago
  As of 2016, the number of American car companies that haven't gone bankrupt is a grand total of two: Ford and Tesla. Also, four entities have launched rockets into space: the US, China, the Soviet Union (Russia) and Elon Musk. This guy is thinking and planning on a scale I find it hard to even imagine, to fit in my brain.
  • spenczar5 10y ago
    What? No. Orbital (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Sciences_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_Sciences_Corporation) launched a rocket into space in 1990, entirely privately. France [1], Japan [2], India [3], Israel [4], Iran [5], and even North Korea [6] have developed and launched rockets that successfully put satellites in orbit. I like Elon as much as the next guy, but this mythologizing is just too much. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamant [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_(rocket_family) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_(rocket_family) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Launch_Vehicle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Launch_Vehicle [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavit [5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safir_(rocket) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safir_(rocket) [6] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unha
    • RubberSpoon 10y ago
      It's a misquote from the Elon Musk Wait But Why article: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-man.html http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-m... "the four entities in history who have managed to launch a spacecraft into orbit and successfully return it to Earth are the US, Russia, China—and SpaceX"
    • greglindahl 10y ago
      RubberSpoon is correct that the reference must be to re-entry. I'd like to add that the UK also put a single satellite in orbit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow
• dskloet 10y ago
  > The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release Doesn't Tesla charge a large fee to have autopilot enabled on your car? Isn't that equally morally reprehensible?
• paul_milovanov 10y ago
  For a bit of a reality check, go take a look at Financial Times coverage of Tesla. Tesla will require regular infusions of capital over, say, the next 5 years. The only source for that is more equity, and to do that you need to actually start meeting some of your self-declared profitability goals. Up to now, Tesla hasn't. The tactic of diverting attention with "but look, here's this great awesome world-changing thing we'll do next" has worked so far but it's rapidly getting old. In general, the frequency with which sleights of hand are starting to be employed is concerning. Remember the "but don't just take my word on it — I myself will be buying $20M of new stock!" thing? Sure you will to reassure investors, given that loss of confidence will cost you personally far more than $20M. SolarCity? "If Musk thought Tesla really needs a solar company, he might as well buy a good one. But it doesn't" [FT Lex]. Given how important it is that they are able to keep raising capital through equity offerings, taking the risk of freaking the investors out with SolarCity acquisition (otherwise expected to go into bankruptcy protection by next year) makes sense only if letting SC fail presents a bigger risk of the same. The Musk fairytale would certainly take a hit from a SC bankruptcy. And Musk setting these crazy numbers goals practically guarantees he's setting TSLA shareholders up for disappointment. Non-profit-making Amazon has been raised as a counterargument in the comments on this thread; the amount of trust the market has extended to Bezos for the time that it has is practically unprecedented; and Bezos has worked hard to make that happen by making investment/direction choices & providing information to earn the trust of the market. Musk, to the contrary, is doing everything to the opposite. Now, what's the likelihood of a macro downturn within the next 2-5 years? Massive. That might trip up the availability of capital a bit—those refundable $1000 deposits too but who cares about them (by the way, much of T's capital has been raised during the period of literally historically unprecedented low cost of capital) I didn't even begin to talk about competition. Or that Panasonic, T's critical gigafactory partner, isn't just sitting around twiddling thumbs (or the Chinese). So, it'd be prudent to curb your enthusiasm. There might not be a part trois.
  • Kutta 10y ago
    Musk doesn't primarily raise capital by selling prospects of eventual dividend. He openly doesn't care at all about profitability, he only cares about the oft-stated SpaceX/Tesla goals, and is pretty much willing to take any money and opportunity that comes his way, be it public rounds or government support. Musk raises capital by selling the prospect of the achievement of his stated goals. Part of the investors care about Musk's goals, and another part invest in Musk because they think that other people caring about Musk's goals sets Tesla's market value.
• simonhughes22 10y ago
  Wow. Just wow.
• ejz 10y ago
  This isn't really that interesting. There's nothing here that hasn't been said already or at least very strongly suggested by Musk. The last master plan was interesting because no one had ever really made a successful electric car company, so no one imagined it could be anything but a rich person's toy, so Musk's claim that he could make a desirable mass production car was a huge shock. It's also very sloppy; it's not an actual plan, with goals and steps that logically follow each other. The last master plan had a clear logic to it: you used the margin of each successive step to fund research and development further down in order to increase the use of electric cars and limit global warming. This is more like a wish list than a plan. "We want to make semis." "It'd be great if we also provided the solar part of the stack because it dovetails with this other initiative we're doing." "Once we have solar, we can do this new thing." Etc, etc. Unlike the first master plan, I can't gauge how long any of this will take or whether it is feasible. I can't gauge what the actual strategy is any better than I could yesterday. And isn't that the point of a Master Plan?
• deleted 10y ago
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• bambax 10y ago
  > Enable your car to make money for you when you aren't using it In cities, everyone needs their car at exactly the same time, that's why we have congestions. When I'm not using my car, no one else needs one (that's an exaggeration of course but not by much). So in order to get to sustainability, we need to understand why remote working (for instance) hasn't happened yet.