Tesla Just Revealed Its New Master Plan

Tesla Model S charging (Credit: Tesla )

Elon Musk has been hinting at a new “master plan” for Tesla, but was too busy landing rockets and doing other simple stuff to reveal it. Now that those other things are out of the way, he’s finally revealed what he has in store for the controversial automaker.

First off, Tesla isn’t really going to be just an automaker. The “Motors” part of the name is gone, and Musk has been making waves by trying to merge Tesla with Solar City. That falls in with the first part of the new plan, which involves generating a bunch of solar energy and storing it to use for cars, buildings and everything else.

Musk then revealed that Tesla is most definitely going to release a small SUV, plus a pickup truck in the near future. The company’s not going to stop there, but will target the commercial sector next with heavy-duty trucks and public transit solutions. The Tesla Semi will be unveiled sometime in 2017.

Another big focus for Tesla will be autonomous tech. This is probably the most controversial point, because a number of people quite frankly don’t trust a robot doing any driving for them. The plan involves partial autonomy now, with a full version coming later.

Finally, with fully-autonomous tech, Musk wants to let vehicle owners share their car and make some extra cash. Think of it as a robotic Uber, so you won’t have to smell some guy’s horrible body odor or make small talk.

Will Tesla pull all of this off? Maybe. It did achieve all of its earlier goals, which were ambitious but still pale in comparison.