Elon Musk teases ‘Tesla Master Plan Part 4’ again, but part 2 is still incomplete

During a strange publicly livestreamed “all-hands” meeting, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said once again that he’s working on a “Master Plan Part 4” for the company, which is currently on part 3 of its master plan. But the problem is, even part 2 is not yet complete.

Tesla’s “master plans” have guided the company for years, showing a general outline of what direction it plans to go.

The first installment of Tesla’s master plan was posted in 2006, titled “The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me)” (it has since been deleted from the website).

The blog post was a tongue in cheek list of Tesla’s priorities for the future, with four steps laid out:

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1. Build sports car.
2. Use that money to build an affordable car.
3. Use that money to build an even more affordable car.
4. While doing above, also provide zero-emission electric power generation options.

Tesla managed to finish all of those steps, by releasing the Roadster, Model S, and Model 3. It also purchased SolarCity and sells solar panel installations today, so, job completed. And completed quite well, considering Tesla was nothing in 2006 and hadn’t sold a single car, and is now a global powerhouse changing the entire auto industry.

Ten years after that original blog post, the “plan” was updated in 2016 with “Master Plan, Part Deux” (which has also since been deleted from the website). That plan was summarized as:

1. Create stunning solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage
2. Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments
3. Develop a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning
4. Enable your car to make money for you when you aren’t using it

This plan has not been quite as successful as the original secret master plan.

A progress check on master plan part 2

First, Tesla’s “solar roof” business has turned more into the company providing solar panel systems to independent installers. These are integrated well through software with Tesla’s Powerwall system (and additional features like Virtual Power Plants, Storm Watch, and so on). But Tesla’s solar roof project didn’t quite turn out as planned – it’s a single design instead of the four designs originally promised, and deployment of that design was… rocky, to say the least.

Second, Tesla has expanded its product line to cover two (or three) more segments: mid-size SUVs, with the Model Y; something kinda sorta approximating a truck, with the Cybertruck; and heavy trucking, with the Tesla Semi.

These are the “major” segments it said it would address in the blog post, so they get partial credit there – except that the Semi is still yet to reach any significant volume numbers, and Tesla has not released a promised “high passenger-density urban transport” (the closest thing there is the recently-announced Robovan, which is absolutely nowhere near production).

Third, Tesla has not successfully deployed self-driving capability that is 10X safer, even by its own numbers. Tesla’s Autopilot Safety Report, which the company only occasionally releases, says that Autopilot is a bit more than 5X safer than a human – but this comes with the caveat that the system will typically spend more time activated in situations where it’s more capable, and drivers will choose to take over when they think the system isn’t going to be able to do something.

Tesla doesn’t publicize data on how much safer FSD is than human drivers, rather referring to “miles between critical disengagement” and other moving goalposts.

So those are three steps which haven’t really gotten finished, but, we can perhaps give some credit for movement in the direction of each of them.

The fourth step, however, has simply not happened. This referred to an idea which at the time was called “Tesla Network,” which was supposed to be a ride-hailing app that Tesla owners could send their cars out to make money with – and the source of Musk’s “appreciating asset” comments.

Not only has that not happened, but even autonomy has not happened. Tesla FSD is still level 2, and while it claims it will have level 4 capable vehicles this year in Austin, we’ve yet to see that.

So, partial credit for master plan part 2, but we’re still in progress.

Part 3 goes in another direction, is huge in scope

After that, Tesla released Master Plan Part 3 in 2023, an entirely different sort of document than the last two. Instead of just being a snarky blog post, this was a 40-page white paper with calculations showing that the world could transition to renewable energy and solve climate change with the resources and technology available to us today.

It’s an interesting read, and despite the weird analogues to Musk’s personal beliefs about population growth, the calculations, while optimistic and self-serving for an EV/sustainable tech company, do make sense. It lays out the case about how to transition the entire world to sustainability, and I think it does so pretty persuasively. I’ve recommended it to many as a way to lay out the potential green transition.

…But, clearly, that has not happened yet either.

Musk drops hints at Tesla Master Plan 4

Then, with two plans still in progress, and only a bit more than a year after unveiling the third part, Musk announced last June that he is “working on Tesla Master Plan 4.”

Nine months later, we’ve yet to hear more details about that idea, but today during his presentation, he did refer back to it again.

Today, he was asked a question by one of the… uh… employees? assembled for his… uh… all-hands meeting/stock pumping livestream?, and the question went thusly (the question was hard to hear, so here’s the meat of it):

“What phase of the plan are we in and how long will it go?”

To which Musk responded:

“We’re at phase 3 of the master plan, since master plan 1 and 2 have been completed. Now, master plan part 3 is a very long master plan, because it’s basically making all energy on earth sustainable. And I actually need to supplement it with the, sort of, ‘abundance for all.’ Maybe thats master plan 4. I’ve kinda described master plan 4 essentially. Which is autonomous cars, autonomous humanoid robots, combine that with solar and battery storage, and I think the future’s gonna be incredible.”

So, we now have an idea of what Musk thinks master plan part 4 will be, at least, which is similar to what Electrek’s Fred Lambert predicted it would be back in June: robots and self-driving.

Electrek’s Take

But what about them? We know this is what Musk has been talking about recently, and a lot of those ideas haven’t really turned out – at least not yet.

First of all, we already know about the solar and battery storage, and the autonomous cars. Those were in previous parts of the master plan, and Musk has been promising them next year for ten years, so there’s nothing new there.

In particular, the autonomous car reaches all the way back to part 2, initiated in 2016, and is still incomplete – despite Musk’s incorrect statement today saying that it has been completed. This either suggests he doesn’t know what is going on with his company, or he’s lying. Neither is a great option.

And robots, the only new portion of the proposed master plan part 4, are definitely not quite what they’re cracked up to be – yet, at least. But that’s the point of a master plan, to start heading in that direction, not to already be there – so, fair enough.

But are Musk’s predictions about robotics realistic?

Musk has also stated that humanoid robots will be worth $20-30 trillion to Tesla’s market cap, because everyone in the world will have two personal robots. This seems unlikely on its face, but especially so when Musk says that AGI – Artificial General Intelligence, where a single computer is capable of accomplishing all the same tasks as a human – is coming this year.

Beyond AGI, Musk has claimed that Tesla will change the world in several other ways this year, but thats quite a packed release schedule given Tesla’s recent history (and its leadership’s current distractions and anti-sustainability actions). Musk is known for overpromising, and this feels like another example of such.

The idea that Tesla, a car company, will somehow be the first in the world to accomplish AGI, scaling humanoid robots to the point where everyone in the world can have two, alongside everything else, and on such a short timeline, seems unlikely.

It seems perhaps a little more likely that this meeting, and a potential part 4 of the plan, are both an attempt to reframe the current conversation about Tesla, which is quite negative as sales drop drastically amid Musk’s meddling in anti-sustainability and white supremacist politics.

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