Master Plan, Part Deux - <AUTHOR> https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux <comment><USER2> _" 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.

<comment><USER3> Ford can have fewer employees per car because they're at full scale, they've outsourced nearly all their engineering and have outsourced their sales as well via an antiquated dealer model.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf15nMnayXk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf15nMnayXk)

<comment><USER4> Say what you will about their "antiquated" business practices, but Ford consistently does one thing that Tesla never does: it turns a profit

<comment><USER5> If this was the only thing that mattered for businesses, we wouldn't have Amazon as Walmart has consistently produced more net profit over Amazon since the last 22 years. 1

1\. [http://revenuesandprofits.com/amazon-vs-walmart-revenues- and...](http://revenuesandprofits.com/amazon-vs-walmart-revenues-and- profits-1995-2014/)

<comment><USER6> As Amazon looses money on every sale, and makes it up with funding from new shareholders, I'm going to call it a Ponzi scheme and not a business.

<comment><USER7> Reminds me of the old accounting joke. CFO -> CEO We have a major problem, recent price cuts mean that we are now making a loss per unit on our major product lines. CEO -> CFO Don't worry about that, We'll make it up on the volume!

<comment><USER8> I have this bookmarked just for these types of discussions. It's surprising how often I have used it:

[http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0135.html](http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0135.html)

<comment><USER9> Not to over-analyze a comic, but the business model might not be awful in this case. They sell all potions for 20gp kind of like the original dollar stores. The one particular item is at a loss, but the majority may be at a profit or at least the aggregate based on volume is a profit. Basically they have loss- leaders to get people to use them as their only store.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > "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.

<comment><USER11> 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?

<comment><USER12> 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-m...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/electric-car-particulate- matter/)

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.

<comment><USER13> > have very toxic-to-mine, manufacture, and dispose-of batteries.

This is absolutely false. Lithium is not toxic to mine at all. It isn't even "mined".

[http://cleantechnica.com/2016/05/12/lithium-mining-vs-oil- sa...](http://cleantechnica.com/2016/05/12/lithium-mining-vs-oil-sands-meme- thorough-response/)

> Electric cars cause pollution

They cause zero pollution when you have solar panels on your roof and the car is properly scrapped after you're done with it.

> The way to "save the planet" is to not drive.

This is silly and impractical.

<comment><USER14> There's more than lithium in the batteries, and other components such as Cobalt or Arsenic are not exactly nontoxic. On balance however, lithium ion batteries are less toxic than alternatives.

Realistically, at present most EV owners will not charge their cars from solar panels but from the utility mains and that means coal-generated electricity in many if not most areas.

Car manufacturing involves a tremendous investment of energy to mine and produce steel, aluminum, rubber, plastics, and electronics. Recycling itself consumes more energy, and in many cases raw virgin product is cheaper than recycled.

Not driving is impractical. Driving less, when possible, is worth considering.

Right now if you need to buy a car, the most environmentally friendly choice is probably a used (no new manufacturing) fuel-efficient conventional car.

<comment><USER15> It is perhaps an artifact of the bay area but there are many many Tesla vehicles here and many of them seem to use the superchargers for charging[1]. But the question of pollution and CO2 comparisons between ICE vehicles and electric ones, comes down firmly on the side of the electric vehicles (for the case of California at least). The thermal efficiency of converting gas to electricity is over 47% and the closest an ICE can come is about 38%. Lots of additional information from the EIA here [2].

[1] A friend of mine who owns one said the only thing worse than the 20 minute charge time is waiting 20 minutes to plug into an available spot.

[2] [http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec17.pdf](http://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/annual/pdf/sec17.pdf)

<comment><USER16> > [1] A friend of mine who owns one said the only thing worse than the 20 > minute charge time is waiting 20 minutes to plug into an available spot.

Actually it would be a lot more efficient if your friend charged at home or at work rather than drive all the way to a supercharger station.

You would do well to point your friend to this PSA [1] by Elon Musk and J B Straubel during the Q&A at Tesla's shareholder meeting some months ago.

[1] [https://youtu.be/O1aPRKSuXr0?t=650](https://youtu.be/O1aPRKSuXr0?t=650)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> 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.

<comment><USER14> 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.

<comment><USER18> Don't be so dramatic. This is me every day. It's ADHD meets debt, family obligations, and dead-end job. A lot of entrepreneurs/wantrepreneurs and devs have ADHD. Can't do much about it unless I pop pills, which I'm not overly keen on doing. I'd rather find something to do that motivates me to get out of bed at 5am every day.

<comment><USER19> I've noticed some form of existential malaise seems to be very common among people with ADHD.

Let me also recommend popping-pills. It's not enough by itself, but it can help you do the yak-shaving that is needed for getting out of a dead-end job. At least speaking for myself, without medication, updating a resume, practicing interviewing skills, and researching job prospects (or alternatively doing market research, developing an MVP, filling out paperwork for a business, and seeking seed funding) could take years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> 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.

<comment><USER21> 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.

<comment><USER22> 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.

<comment><USER23> The main duty of executives is to increase shareholder value, but their personal incentives are generally misaligned so they abuse profit centers and undermine company future to hit short term numbers and get the bonuses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> > 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.

<comment><USER25> 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 ?,...)

<comment><USER26> "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.

<comment><USER27> Computers are not apriori better - you can always develop a stupid or buggy algorithm that fails often. But Tesla is working to PROVE (using real-world data) that autopilot is better than a human driver, and IMPROVE it constantly until it is ten times better.

<comment><USER28> Tesla seems quite willing to massage their telemetry data until it shows what they want it to show.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> 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.

<comment><USER30> 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.

<comment><USER3> 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.

<comment><USER31> 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.

<comment><USER22> I don't see how this will work though. Unless you plan to equip all those future cars with the same high quality sensors as those on the Google ones (which I've heard are prohibitively expensive).

If those sensors eventually do become really cheap, then Tesla could use them too and negate any advantages Google might have had.

<comment><USER32> They're already cheap (see elsewhere in this thread for links). Tesla has opted not to implement them because Elon thinks LIDAR isn't needed [1]. Of course without LIDAR you get situations like autopilot running into white tractor trailers because it can't see them...

[1] [http://9to5google.com/2015/10/16/elon-musk-says-that-the- lid...](http://9to5google.com/2015/10/16/elon-musk-says-that-the-lidar-google- uses-in-its-self-driving-car-doesnt-make-sense-in-a-car-context/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> 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.

<comment><USER29> 1\. They'll be able to line the entire trailer with batteries. Elon's pretty good at physics and engineering: if he says this can be done better than existing gas-powered semis, you're not going to be able to prove him wrong with some back-of-the-envelope arithmetic, as if he hadn't considered this. Obviously he has and knows it _will_ work. Tesla didn't get this far on vague conjecture.

2\. Maybe so, but it will happen, and the delay won't really hinder Tesla. They're not dependent on it. It's not like they can't sell cars without it. It's just another tier of advancement to be reached in time.

3\. Maybe _you_ don't want anyone using your car (nor would I), but that's why it's _optional_. A lot of people will _love_ this. Owning a car of that level of quality for a greatly reduced price thanks to earned revenue. I assume the app will let you monitor its location, and you can anticipate when you'll need it back again and call it back before that time arrives. Or....just take someone else's car if you're in such a rush :) Sharing is caring.

<comment><USER33> > 1\. They'll be able to line the entire trailer with batteries

But that's an enormous inversion of expense that falls on the trailer owners. The tractor-trailer model works so well because it concentrates complexity and cost in the tractor.

At present trailers are mechanically fairly simple and require only routine servicing with a basic toolkit. They draw power from their tractor. An owner can maintain a fleet of trailers to match their peak demand and are immediately available. Just charter a tractor and away they go.

Battery-equipped trailers will be much more complex, heavy and maintenance- intensive. More expensive but with a smaller payload and prolonged periods of unavailability whilst charging. The cost of haulage charters will have to reduce by magnitudes to make that an attractive preposition.

<comment><USER34> Semis sound like a better market for hot-swapping and renting your battery compared to consumers. The rollout is a bit more straightforward since the travel routes are more obvious (weigh stations or truck stops).

<comment><USER35> Some math on the weight issue - A big rig tractor unit is about 10 tons in weight. A tesla model S battery is about half a ton. The energy to move a truck is maybe 8x (given trucks get 5mpg, cars 40mpg approx), so that's a 4 ton battery for 200 mile range. Electric motors weigh much less than a large diesel engine so the weight would come out about the same. I think cost may be more of an issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> "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.

<comment><USER26> 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-...](http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Tesla-Model-S-One- Billion-Miles-Line-Graph-june-2015.jpg) ) 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.

<comment><USER36> In other words, if you're a Tesla driver, you're safer driving the car yourself than driving it with autopilot.

<comment><USER35> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> _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.

<comment><USER38> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> 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...](http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/musk-says-solarcity- deal-about-synergy-but-it-may-be-about-debt/ar-AAhu9vZ)

<comment><USER13> > I still don't understand the SolarCity part.

People who buy electric cars are far more likely to buy solar panels. And storage batteries. And wiring they would need for the electric car. It's all directly related.

So when I buy a Tesla ... I have to hire a 3rd party to install the wiring to charge it. I can buy the storage battery from Tesla, but again, need to hire someone else to install it. And if I want solar panels for that storage battery, again 3rd party.

SolarCity has a fleet of professionals ready to do all of that. They also have a plant to manufacture their own panels, which hopefully they'll be able to differentiate on. Combining the two companies will enable Tesla to service that whole loop with the equipment and installation.

Now, you can argue that Tesla may have been better off starting their own division from scratch or buying someone else ... but from what I heard, they're getting a hell of a bargain for SolarCity.

<comment><USER40> > People who buy electric cars are far more likely to buy solar panels. And > storage batteries. And wiring they would need for the electric car. It's all > directly related.

Is this true? I'd be interested in learning more about the data behind this.

Anyway, for the sake of discussion let's say it is. Does that mean there is a correlation that scales to the whole population?

Or is it just that electric cars and solar panels appeal to the same small segment of the population? That would show a strong correlation, but not scale well.

<comment><USER41> Generally, having an electric car would push your electric bill into much higher usage tiers where the power is most expensive. Solar panels make the most sense for people who use the most electricity and pay the most for it. I've seen first hand that people who drive electric cars like to talk about clean energy and if they've got solar panels on their roof, it refutes the argument about burning coal to generate the electricity. As solar panels continue to drop in price, it starts to make more sense for the rest of the population, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> 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.

<comment><USER42> 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.

<comment><USER2> Well, Microsoft's mission statement was once "A computer on every desk, running Microsoft software." Mission accomplished, 20 years ago.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> 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!

</comment><comment><USER44> "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.

<comment><USER45> 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?

<comment><USER44> "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.

<comment><USER45> Ah, you're right. Rather than living in one of the most stable and wealthy societies on the planet, we're actually falling fast towards a Mad Max-style dystopia. I must remember to weld some more armour onto my car tonight...

Just because we're not living in an impossible utopia doesn't mean the situation is dire. We haven't had great leadership since the Hawke/Keating years (over 20 years ago), yet still the country is going grand - not having great leadership doesn't mean we must be having the polar opposite.

<comment><USER44> I don't know what you think this hyperbole adds to the conversation?

<comment><USER45> "Dire" is hyperbole, and pretending that you don't know what I mean when I say "voted out, not voted in" is just insulting.

I also tried giving you reasoned paragraphs, and you responded with trite lines adding very little - I wouldn't go taking the high road here about 'contributing to the conversation'.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > 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.

<comment><USER14> It seems to me the data tesla are collecting are not unique. How many times logging the same driver driving the same 20 mile commute before you're in diminishing returns?

With deliberately chosen conditions, scenarios, and routes, it seems to me Google could be collecting data that are just as useful although maybe covering much a smaller number of miles.

<comment><USER47> I don't know where you live, but my daily commute is _never_ the same. They either start/end at different times, or I have to take different routes, or the weather is different. I think it would take a lot longer than 3 years before they start seeing actual diminishing returns on mileage collection.

<comment><USER48> More than 3 years? I would confidently wager that noticeable diminishing returns would occur after 3 days, and very significant diminishing returns after 3 weeks.

<comment><USER49> Think about seasons, varying weather, light levels, traffic fluctuation, construction, changing parking patterns, delivery drivers/stopped trucks...the list goes on. It would be very useful to have that occur within a relatively known route, where you can isolate and model what isn't understood already.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> I didn't understand what enables them to get rid of aisles inside buses? People still need to reach their seats right?

<comment><USER51> Also sounds like it's written by someone who has never used public transport his entire life. In my bus in the morning 70% of the passengers are standing not sitting.

<comment><USER52> Yeah, higher densities on public transports can be achieved by standing rather than sitting. For instance, BART has been testing removing seats to fit more people into each train carriage [1].

[1]: [http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/02/04/bart-tests-new-seat- layo...](http://ww2.kqed.org/news/2016/02/04/bart-tests-new-seat-layout-to- ease-crowding-on-trains)

<comment><USER34> I think they're removing seats out of desperation. I've was hearing the planned capacity was many, many times smaller than the current ridership. It can take lots of money, political sway, and quite a few years to catch up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> 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.

<comment><USER54> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> 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.

<comment><USER56> 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.

<comment><USER57> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> _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.

<comment><USER59> 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)

<comment><USER60> It's a misquote from the Elon Musk Wait But Why article: [http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds- raddest-m...](http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest- man.html)

"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"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> 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.

<comment><USER62> 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?

<comment><USER61> 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.

<comment><USER63> 1) It appears that Musk genuinely believes that he is acting as a fiduciary with _long term_ outlook. If the investors don't like the time scale, they can put their money somewhere else. Fuck 'em.

2) In most cases, "formality" and "rigor" only works to mask unfortunate realities and incompetence. Being plain spoken need not imply ignorance nor thoughtlessness. I may not be a sophisticated investor, but Musk's ability to so clearly outline the plan (and proven track record of executing such plans!) gives me great confidence.

3) I view the entertainment and excitement that Musk provides is a small, but welcome dividend that I'm happy to share with non-investors alike. I feel sad for you that you can't or won't appreciate it.

<comment><USER61> Well in SV I've often seen informality leveraged to mask Kool-Aid. 'If I'm talking like the cool kids, how could I possibly be punking you?' Bit of a cliched strategy really. Clearly some people still fall for it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> > "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?

<comment><USER65> 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).

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Anyone else think AbstractTelsaFactoryFactory?

<comment><USER67> AbstractTeslaIndustry is my personal convention in this case.

<comment><USER68> Aha! But how would you create a TeslaFactoryFactoryFactory?

<comment><USER67> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> 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?

<comment><USER70> 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.

<comment><USER71> > 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> "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.

<comment><USER72> Note the Tesla focus on solar, since wind power doesn't work so well on Mars :)

<comment><USER73> Neither does solar :(

<comment><USER74> Why not?

<comment><USER75> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER76> 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.

<comment><USER77> Now let's just wait and see if SpaceX's full vision comes to fruition.

</comment></comment><comment><USER78> > _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?

</comment><comment><USER79> _A first principles physics analysis of automotive production suggests..._

This is the part I really want to see.

</comment><comment><USER80> 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.

<comment><USER81> Agree. The first plan laid out the chronological steps to reach the goal. This second plan is more scattered.

</comment></comment><comment><USER82> > _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?

<comment><USER83> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER84> My favorite quote:

"Starting a car company is idiotic and an electric car company is idiocy squared."

<comment><USER14> Well honestly, the entire plan can be read as either the work of a highly ambitious genious or a raving madman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER50> Are there any more details on the factory factory? I didn't understand that part.

<comment><USER85> Check out this video around 1h22m: [https://youtu.be/6WyaO29XDf8](https://youtu.be/6WyaO29XDf8)

</comment></comment><comment><USER86> 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.

<comment><USER87> 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.

<comment><USER86> 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).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> 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.

</comment><comment><USER89> 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?

</comment><comment><USER90> 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.

<comment><USER91> 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?

<comment><USER90> 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-j...](https://www.tesla.com/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-plan-just- between-you-and-me)

<comment><USER91> OK, but swap 'investment' for money and it still makes sense. Does it seem likely that someone like Elon Musk would refuse to leverage investment and insist on funding all growth and r+d from profits only? That would take decades surely?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> 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- measurem...](http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/at-work/test-and- measurement/wrights-law-edges-out-moores-law-in-predicting-technology- development)

[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%2Fjourna...](http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0052669#pone.0052669-Alberth1)

[http://www.santafe.edu/research/working- papers/abstract/0650...](http://www.santafe.edu/research/working- papers/abstract/0650f0fb526862cb048a74a33c5417ac/)

</comment><comment><USER93> 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?

<comment><USER57> There are Nepotism conflicts between the boards of the two companies... Not a plan? If anything, it swings/stinks too far to the other side. IMHO...

[http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/tesla-elon-musk- solarcity/](http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/tesla-elon-musk-solarcity/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER94> 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

</comment><comment><USER95> > 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?

</comment><comment><USER96> Master Plan, Part Trois:

Solar-powered, autonomous spacecraft.

<comment><USER50> Actually aircraft could be a very real possibility of you read up on his ideas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER97> > 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?

<comment><USER98> He is saying the government will be ready to approve them then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER99> 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

</comment><comment><USER100> 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?

<comment><USER23> batteries :)

<comment><USER100> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER101> 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.

<comment><USER102> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER103> 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.

<comment><USER85> 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)

<comment><USER104> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER105> 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.

</comment><comment><USER106> "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.

<comment><USER107> Hyperloop will be what we used to call trains.

<comment><USER106> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER108> 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.

<comment><USER109> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER110> > _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.

</comment><comment><USER111> 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?]

</comment><comment><USER112> 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/tesl...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2013/05/tesla_is_worse_than_solyndra_how_the_u_s_government_bungled_its_investment.html)

</comment><comment><USER113> 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.

<comment><USER114> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER115> > 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.

<comment><USER47> 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.

<comment><USER116> But they aren't sharing their accident data...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER117> 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.

</comment><comment><USER118> 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)

</comment><comment><USER119> 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.

<comment><USER120> > 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.

<comment><USER119> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER121> I would have thought you'd want to go for delivery vans before semi-trailers.

</comment><comment><USER122> 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.

<comment><USER123> Buildings. A car roof isn't enough area and isn't pointed in the right direction.

<comment><USER124> Not if it's a trailer.

<comment><USER123> 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.

<comment><USER50> 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?

<comment><USER123> Those improvements are presently not done because of cost. Grid electricity is a lot cheaper than diesel.

I guess electric trucks would still put a lot more effort into avoiding air resistance because of the lower energy per unit mass of batteries (the aerodynamic improvements can be pretty directly traded for either range or cargo capacity).

I think present day solar cells are a combination of too expensive and too heavy to bother with. That could change in the future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER125> > 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.

</comment><comment><USER126> 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?

<comment><USER127> yes indeed, and not just autos

</comment></comment><comment><USER128> 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

<comment><USER29> 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.

<comment><USER14> 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.

<comment><USER129> 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.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER130> 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/)

<comment><USER131> The problem with your idea was that it wasn't SOCIAL or VIRAL or could leverage SEO, like Jason likes his businesses ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER127> 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.

</comment><comment><USER132> 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?

</comment><comment><USER133> Its so rubegoldbergtastic it puts all other _successful_ entrepreneurs in history to shame, which is to say I'm incredibly bearish on it.

</comment><comment><USER134> 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

<comment><USER135> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER136> 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).

<comment><USER137> 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.

<comment><USER136> Solar powered cars are only working well in Urban areas, and they don't make economic sense, they're simply a form of guilt-free conspicuous consumption.

There will definitely be people who need their own vehicles, but typical families (and typical families live in urban or suburban areas) won't.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER131> This is just mind blowing to me.

This man is dreaming the future. Nay, he is _building_ the future.

</comment><comment><USER138> "...transition the role of bus driver to that of fleet manager..."

Does he really think that ?

<comment><USER139> 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.

</comment></comment><comment><USER140> The footer is covering the entire page in my glorious IE11 browser

</comment><comment><USER141> I'm wondering what the effect of this plan will be on Uber.

<comment><USER142> 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.

<comment><USER143> 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.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER144> the question is how to keep those cars clean though

</comment><comment><USER145> > Enable your car to make money for you when you aren't using it

Gives "pimp my ride" a whole new meaning.

</comment><comment><USER146> Car roof or house roof?

<comment><USER147> House roof.

</comment></comment><comment><USER148> So tesla is in the business of making Model 3 factory factories.

</comment><comment><USER149> Wow. Just wow.

</comment><comment><USER150> and post Tesla acquisition of SpaceX,

Master Plan: Part Tres

Solar powered flying cars that will take you to Mars and beyond.

</comment><comment><USER151> a

</comment><comment><USER152> Tesla should buy Uber to manager all booking, locating taxis and other stuff. Then it would be badass combination!

</comment><comment><USER153> > 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?

<comment><USER154> Someone has to own the cabs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER155> 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?

<comment><USER29> 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.

<comment><USER125> Natural counter to the people who worship at the feet of their god king musk.

<comment><USER156> We should always be thoughtful and critical of ideas regardless from whom they are coming, but autonomously landed first stage rocket boosters returning from orbit is a _big_ fucking deal. There may be some blind worship, but we are not talking about a charlatan here.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER157> 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.

<comment><USER158> Will be fun to revisit your comment in 10 years

<comment><USER157> 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.</comment></comment></comment>


Insurance offers 5 percent discount for people that switch to Tesla autopilot - <AUTHOR> https://www.reuters.com/article/us-direct-line-ins-tesla/direct-line-offers-5-percent-tesla-auto-pilot-incentive-idUSKBN1DY1UV <comment><USER2> >(Reuters) - Britain's largest motor insurer Direct Line is offering Tesla Inc drivers in Britain a 5-percent discount for switching on the car's autopilot system, seeking to encourage use of a system it hopes will cut down on accidents.

Seems like Direct Line is trying to entice Tesla owners to switch to them.

Proof shall be in the pudding if they are safer.

The real question is, why give away free money?I know in the U.S, by law you need auto-insurance, so they(insurance companies) can charge whatever the market will bear. Not sure of U.K.

<comment><USER3> It's likely that they have higher margins anyway with Tesla's. So this might be a situation where they get a marketing win while retaining their regular margins.

<comment><USER2> Not necessarily true.The liability is higher because of notional value of the car is higher.

It may mean fewer occurrences of claims, but there's a reason why insurance on Lamborghinis and Ferraris is incredibly expensive.

I believe the average Tesla cost is around 80k.

I am not sure how expensive replacement parts are.

I agree with you on your marketing statement.

<comment><USER4> Nobody really knows how risky is the autopilot and I would not trust it just because marketing says so. And why Tesla has to provide the data? insurance companies are quite good at statistics so why not just collect the information and see for real? The easiest explanation is that there is some other deal underneath.</comment></comment></comment></comment>