Elon Musk has a ludicrously ambitious “Master Plan” for Tesla

We finally know what Elon Musk is thinking. Tesla Motors’ founder and CEO expanded his vision for the company in his second installment of Tesla’s ‘Master Plan,” a sequel to comments he posted on the company blog in 2006. In the latest version, Musk paints a picture of a renewable energy enterprise, with goals such as creating solar roofs that are seamlessly integrated with battery storage, and an expanded vehicle product line that includes heavy-duty trucks and large passenger transport vehicles. He also reiterated the intent to work toward “true self-driving” vehicles that are several times safer than manual driving, and to enable your car to make money for you when you aren’t using it. Creating the “solar-roof-with-battery product” is the first piece — and that had been an element of Musk’s earlier roadmap. Musk envisions a system that would turn individuals (or perhaps more accurately, homeowners) into their own utilities. This is why Musk wants Tesla to fully acquire SolarCity. He said Wednesday he considers the fact that Tesla and SolarCity were ever separate to begin with “largely an accident of history,” saying that the time is right to combine Tesla’s scalable Powerwall wall battery with SolarCity’s solar panels. Secondly, Musk wants to expand Tesla’s line to “cover the major forms of terrestrial transport,” which are, in short, trucks, buses, and a unique kind of ride-sharing scheme based on autonomous cars.