Tesla publishes ‘Master Plan Part 4’ and faces heavy criticism

The first ‘Master Plan’ from 2006 truly shaped Tesla for years. At the time, Musk (then still an investor in Tesla) announced plans to bring an electric sports car to market, followed by “affordable” electric cars. Tesla could not meet the exact dates and price promises (a recurring issue for the company), but the overall strategy worked: first came the Tesla Roadster in 2008, then the Model S in 2012 (later joined by the Model X), before the Model 3 finally brought Tesla to the mass market in 2017. The 2016 “Part Deux” added autonomous driving. Tesla has invested heavily in this area since, but most of the specific announcements from “Part Deux” remain unfulfilled. Nevertheless, the second “Master Plan” shaped Tesla’s development for years.

The third Master Plan is still too recent to assess its long-term impact on Tesla – it dates from March 2023. However, Musk has already revised several points. The overarching goal of achieving sustainability remains. But Tesla had initially planned to contribute with a new, even cheaper compact model below the Model 3/Y. Musk later halted this project in favour of the Robotaxi, focusing only on a more affordable Model Y. With this, the impact of the Master Plans has already been somewhat undermined.

With the fourth Master Plan now published on X, Tesla expands its mission to accelerate the global transition to sustainable energy. “Our desire to push beyond what is considered achievable will foster the growth needed for truly sustainable abundance,” the new goal states. In the Master Plan, Tesla outlines how it plans to develop and offer products and services leveraging its expertise to promote global prosperity and human well-being. Artificial intelligence will enable much of this.

However: whereas earlier Master Plans still included fairly concrete announcements on how to achieve overarching goals (such as moving from sports cars to affordable models), the current plan (which is no longer attributed personally to Elon Musk) lacks such targets or figures.

Another point of criticism: Elon Musk has promised a fourth Master Plan for over a year, claiming it would be far more concrete than the third plan on the transition to sustainable energy. The formerly Tesla-aligned US portal Electrek therefore calls Master Plan Part 4 “nothing more than a smorgasbord of AI promises about its humanoid robot, which can’t even serve popcorn” and “a bunch of utopic nonsense, complete with AI ‘abundance’ buzzwords that Grok could have easily written.”

x.com (Masterplan), teslamag.de, electrek.co

This article was first published by Sebastian Schaal for electrive’s German edition.