Elon Musk reveals Tesla's future plans

Tesla Motors' CEO and serial entrepreneur, Elon Musk, has recently revealed the company's future plans. In his detailed blog post, Musk has described the way forward for the American electric car manufacturer, and has talked about what all milestones he expects Tesla to achieve in the next 10 years.

Musk started off by remembering a similar blog post he made around 10 years ago, when Tesla Motors was in its inception stages. The first master plan, as he terms it, has now been completed, and thus the CEO has penned down the strategy of what the company needs to do in the future. He calls it "Master Plan, Part Deux".

Following are the major points of his blog post:

Tesla - SolarCity Merger

Musk stressed on the fact that Tesla Motors was formed to provide sustainable energy solutions to people throughout the world. The CEO is also a co-founder and major investor in SolarCity, an American company that deals in solar power systems for houses and industries. Last month, Tesla had pitched Rs. 23,500 crore to acquire SolarCity, and the CEO's blog post confirms that the two companies will soon come under the same umbrella. Musk claimed that since both the companies are chasing the same overarching goals, it would be better to merge them for easing the overall operations. Through the said merger, both companies would be able to achieve the goal of integrated energy generation and storage.

Expand product portfolio - Compact SUV and pickup coming soon

Tesla Motors managed to develop quite a stir when they launched the Model 3. Priced at USD 35,000 (around Rs. 22 lakh), the Model 3 is the most affordable Tesla car ever produced. And CEO Elon Musk has made it clear that they won't launch any product below the Model 3 in the near future. However, the company will now try to stretch its portfolio to various segments. As a result, Tesla is currently working on a Compact SUV and a pickup truck. Launch deadlines haven’t been made public.

Commercial Vehicles

Elon Musk also revealed Tesla's plans to venture into the commercial vehicle space. The automaker is reportedly working on heavy-duty trucks and high passenger density urban transports (buses). These Tesla commercial vehicles are still in their early stages of development, and will thus be introduced next year. Musk claims that these new commercial vehicles from Tesla will reduce the cost of cargo transportation, while making it safer and fun to operate.

Autonomous Driving

Tesla's autopilot feature has been under scanner since the last few weeks. But the CEO still stressed that Tesla would soon be introducing fully-autonomous driving in its cars. This will allow the users to simply punch-in their destination, and the car will automatically take them to the entered spot. Moreover, customers will be able to summon their distantly parked Teslas, so that the car can drive itself and pick them up, without any human intervention.

Tesla shared fleet

Elon Musk has also talked about the possibility of earning revenue from your car, when you aren't using it. For this to be applicable, autonomous driving would need to be approved by the concerned regulatory authorities of the region. As part of this mission, customers would be able to add their Tesla car to the company’s shared fleet through the Tesla car app. The customers' vehicle will then operate as a fleet car and earn revenue for the owner. The CEO claims that this could help lower the overall cost of ownership of the Tesla car.

Source: Tesla Blog