Tesla’s production capacities are poised for a significant growth spurt, CEO Elon Musk told the crowd gathered at the company’s Austin, Texas Gigafactory for Investor Day 2023 — and AI is evident that the magic bullet that brought them there. This is all part of what Musk calls Master Plan part 3.
This is actually Musk’s third Master Plan, the first two coming in 2006 and 2016, respectively. It has served as a roadmap for the company’s growth and development over the past 17 years as Tesla has evolved from a fledgling startup to the world’s leading EV automaker. “There is a clear path to a sustainable energy on Earth and it doesn’t have to destroy natural habitats,” Musk said during the keynote address.
“You can support a civilization that is much larger than Earth [currently does]. More than 8 billion people are actually supported sustainably on Earth and I am always shocked and surprised by how few people realize this,” he continued.
Tesla’s main topics will scale to extreme size, which is necessary to move humanity away from fossil fuels, and AI.
But I will also include sections about SpaceX, Tesla and The Boring Company.
– Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 21, 2022
The Master Plan aims to establish a sustainable energy economy by developing 240 terraWatt hours (TWH) of energy storage and 30 TWH of renewable power generation, which will require an estimated $10 trillion investment, nearly 10 percent of global GDP. Musk says, however, that number is less than half of what we currently spend on the internal combustion economy. In total, he anticipates that we would need less than 0.2 percent of the world’s land to create the necessary solar and wind generating capacity.
“All cars will go fully electric and autonomous,” Musk declared, again arguing that ICE vehicles will soon be looked upon with the same disdain as the horse and carriage. He also teased potential plans to electrify airplanes and ships. “As we improve the energy density of batteries, you will see that all transportation will be fully electric, except for rockets,” he said.
“A sustainable energy economy is within reach and we must accelerate it,” added Drew Baglino, SVP of Powertrain and Energy Engineering at Tesla.
After Musk’s opening statement, Tesla executives Lars Moavy and Franz von Holzhausen took the stage to discuss the company’s “production hell” and the challenges of building the Cybertruck from stainless steel. However, the lessons learned from that, Moavy argues will help Tesla make Gen 3 vehicles more efficient, and do so with a much smaller factory footprint. von Holzhausen announced to loud applause that the Cybertruck would arrive later this year, a much closer date than Musk’s previous public estimate that production would not begin until next year.
Unfortunately, no new car will be revealed at this event, von Holzhausen said. That announcement will happen “at a later date.”
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