In March, Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed the third instalment of his ever-evolving Master Plan, a set of ideas and goals for Tesla’s long-term future. In a nutshell, the company’s ultimate goal is to achieve global sustainable energy without ruining the environment.
Musk’s explanation on how to get there was fairly vague, but now, Tesla has published a far more detailed insight in the form of a 41-page document titled the “Master Plan Part 3”.
The document envisions a fully electrified global economy, in which fossil fuels are largely out of the picture. It then calculates the cheapest way to generate and store enough electricity to meet global demand, while making sure the required materials are available and ecologically sound to use.
There’s a lot of numbers to go through in the document, and we’re sure experts from all sides will chime in with detailed analysis soon. There’s plenty that needs to happen before we get to this fully sustainable future, including vastly increasing global renewable energy production, switching to electric vehicles, switching to heat pumps in residential and commercial buildings, changing the way we deliver heat for certain industrial processes, sustainably producing hydrogen, as well as sustainably fuelling planes and boats.
Key numbers from Tesla’s document are as follows: The world needs 30 terawatts of renewable power, and 240 TWh of energy storage capacity, which will require a $10 trillion investment. There are zero insurmountable resource challenges to achieve this, the company claims.
There’s a couple of interesting tidbits in the document. For example, Tesla is teasing several new vehicle categories in its fleet, including a “compact” vehicle, a commercial/passenger van, and an electric bus. Probably the most interesting among these is the first category, which would probably be the rumored Tesla Model. In the new Master Plan document, Tesla says this vehicle category would need a 53kWh battery pack size. The company also says it would be by far the best-selling vehicle in its fleet, with number of units sold roughly doubling that of all its other models combined.
You can read the whole Master Plan Part 3 on Tesla’s website.
