Tesla founder Elon Musk has revealed the scope of his second company ‘Master Plan’, which will revolve around producing electric, autonomous vehicles for commercial applications.
Musk had previously teased that a follow-up to his original master plan document was in the works earlier this month, and last night published it through a blog on Tesla’s corporate website.
Within it he details plans to expand the company’s coverage of the automobile market and deliver a “new kind of pickup truck”, heavy-duty trucks and public transport vehicles. Musk expects its portfolio of commercial vehicles to be unveiled next year.
“We believe the Tesla Semi will deliver a substantial reduction in the cost of cargo transport, while increasing safety and making it really fun to operate,” Musk added.
Musk also confirmed a secondary facet of the new plan that was widely speculated about over the past fortnight. Tesla intends to create a “smoothly integrated” solar-plus-storage product that will be available through one service contact.
The chief executive did however add that Tesla’s proposed acquisition of SolarCity – criticised by some within the investment community – would be imperative to that model.
“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.
“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,” he wrote.