I love how he drops earth-shattering news in such a casual and honest way. Two days ago he tweeted that he was planning to pull an all-nighter to complete the “master product plan.” And then yesterday, he outlined his vision in a simple – and at times personal – blog post for how Tesla is going to change the world. It all feels very genuine.
Will be working at Tesla on Autopilot & Model 3 today, then aiming to pull an all-nighter and complete the master product plan
There are so many interesting snippets from the master plan, that I’m simply going to quote them all here. There’s lots to think about and discuss.
A reminder of the broader vision:
The point of all this was, and remains, accelerating the advent of sustainable energy, so that we can imagine far into the future and life is still good. That’s what “sustainable” means. It’s not some silly, hippy thing – it matters for everyone.
I love how he drops earth-shattering news in such a casual and honest way. Two days ago he tweeted that he was planning to pull an all-nighter to complete the “master product plan.” And then yesterday, he outlined his vision in a simple – and at times personal – blog post for how Tesla is going to change the world. It all feels very genuine.
Will be working at Tesla on Autopilot & Model 3 today, then aiming to pull an all-nighter and complete the master product plan
There are so many interesting snippets from the master plan, that I’m simply going to quote them all here. There’s lots to think about and discuss.
A reminder of the broader vision:
The point of all this was, and remains, accelerating the advent of sustainable energy, so that we can imagine far into the future and life is still good. That’s what “sustainable” means. It’s not some silly, hippy thing – it matters for everyone.
By definition, we must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilization will collapse. Given that we must get off fossil fuels anyway and that virtually all scientists agree that dramatically increasing atmospheric and oceanic carbon levels is insane, the faster we achieve sustainability, the better.
The solar roof and other electric vehicles that Tesla has in the pipeline:
Create a smoothly integrated and beautiful solar-roof-with-battery product that just works, empowering the individual as their own utility, and then scale that throughout the world. One ordering experience, one installation, one service contact, one phone app.
In addition to consumer vehicles, there are two other types of electric vehicle needed: heavy-duty trucks and high passenger-density urban transport. Both are in the early stages of development at Tesla and should be ready for unveiling next year.
Thoughts on self-driving vehicles:
Even once the software is highly refined and far better than the average human driver, there will still be a significant time gap, varying widely by jurisdiction, before true self-driving is approved by regulators. We expect that worldwide regulatory approval will require something on the order of 6 billion miles (10 billion km). Current fleet learning is happening at just over 3 million miles (5 million km) per day.
The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability.
Once we get to the point where Autopilot is approximately 10 times safer than the US vehicle average, the beta label will be removed.
Why an even lower cost vehicle (compared to the Model 3) may never be necessary:
You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you’re at work or on vacation, significantly offsetting and at times potentially exceeding the monthly loan or lease cost. This dramatically lowers the true cost of ownership to the point where almost anyone could own a Tesla. Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not.
And finally, Uber has a new competitor (that, to me, is a good thing):
In cities where demand exceeds the supply of customer-owned cars, Tesla will operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are.
I’ll provide my thoughts on all of the above in a subsequent post. I’m out of writing time for today.
As a vocal supporter of road pricing, I am happy to see us headed in this direction. And I bet that today’s post will just be the beginning of my ruminations on this topic.
Because naturally, it raises a lot of questions:
Should the pricing be fixed or variable? Similar to how Uber’s surge pricing model is intended to ensure that there are always enough drivers on the road, should our road pricing model strive to eliminate traffic congestion by increasing the price of the road as demand rises beyond road capacity? I like the idea of a “congestion charge” rather than just a road toll. There’s something very efficient about it.
Who should pay? Should anyone and everyone who uses the road pay? Or should it just be be non-Toronto residents who aren’t already paying property taxes in the city? I would imagine that this latter scenario would be easier for Toronto politicians to get behind, since there will obviously be a segment of people who flat out don’t want road tolls/pricing. But if we stick with the principle that it’s a “congestion charge”, then everyone should pay. It doesn’t matter where you live when you are demand trying to exceed the available supply of road.
(I’m running a Twitter poll right now with this exact question. At the time of writing this post, “everyone should pay” is winning.)
Should electric vehicles be exempt from the road tolls or congestion charges in order to help accelerate our transition away from fossil fuels? With Tesla getting ready to announce its mass market Model 3 (price $35,000), I’ve been thinking lately that the car I currently own may very well be the last gasoline car I ever own.
It’s still early days for road pricing and our mayor doesn’t seem to be a fan. So who knows how far we’ll get with this RFP. But I for one hope that we find the courage to make the difficult decisions and that this new revenue stream is leveraged for the purpose of building more sustainable forms of urban transport in this city.
Let’s make a 50 year decision and not an election cycle decision.
By accident, this week on Architect This City seems to be turning into Elon Musk week.
Yesterday, Musk announced something called the Powerwall home battery. Measuring about 3′ x 4′, the shield looking battery pack will charge using the electricity generated from solar panels (or from the grid when rates are at their lowest) and then power your home.
By definition, we must at some point achieve a sustainable energy economy or we will run out of fossil fuels to burn and civilization will collapse. Given that we must get off fossil fuels anyway and that virtually all scientists agree that dramatically increasing atmospheric and oceanic carbon levels is insane, the faster we achieve sustainability, the better.
The solar roof and other electric vehicles that Tesla has in the pipeline:
Create a smoothly integrated and beautiful solar-roof-with-battery product that just works, empowering the individual as their own utility, and then scale that throughout the world. One ordering experience, one installation, one service contact, one phone app.
In addition to consumer vehicles, there are two other types of electric vehicle needed: heavy-duty trucks and high passenger-density urban transport. Both are in the early stages of development at Tesla and should be ready for unveiling next year.
Thoughts on self-driving vehicles:
Even once the software is highly refined and far better than the average human driver, there will still be a significant time gap, varying widely by jurisdiction, before true self-driving is approved by regulators. We expect that worldwide regulatory approval will require something on the order of 6 billion miles (10 billion km). Current fleet learning is happening at just over 3 million miles (5 million km) per day.
The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability.
Once we get to the point where Autopilot is approximately 10 times safer than the US vehicle average, the beta label will be removed.
Why an even lower cost vehicle (compared to the Model 3) may never be necessary:
You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you’re at work or on vacation, significantly offsetting and at times potentially exceeding the monthly loan or lease cost. This dramatically lowers the true cost of ownership to the point where almost anyone could own a Tesla. Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not.
And finally, Uber has a new competitor (that, to me, is a good thing):
In cities where demand exceeds the supply of customer-owned cars, Tesla will operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are.
I’ll provide my thoughts on all of the above in a subsequent post. I’m out of writing time for today.
As a vocal supporter of road pricing, I am happy to see us headed in this direction. And I bet that today’s post will just be the beginning of my ruminations on this topic.
Because naturally, it raises a lot of questions:
Should the pricing be fixed or variable? Similar to how Uber’s surge pricing model is intended to ensure that there are always enough drivers on the road, should our road pricing model strive to eliminate traffic congestion by increasing the price of the road as demand rises beyond road capacity? I like the idea of a “congestion charge” rather than just a road toll. There’s something very efficient about it.
Who should pay? Should anyone and everyone who uses the road pay? Or should it just be be non-Toronto residents who aren’t already paying property taxes in the city? I would imagine that this latter scenario would be easier for Toronto politicians to get behind, since there will obviously be a segment of people who flat out don’t want road tolls/pricing. But if we stick with the principle that it’s a “congestion charge”, then everyone should pay. It doesn’t matter where you live when you are demand trying to exceed the available supply of road.
(I’m running a Twitter poll right now with this exact question. At the time of writing this post, “everyone should pay” is winning.)
Should electric vehicles be exempt from the road tolls or congestion charges in order to help accelerate our transition away from fossil fuels? With Tesla getting ready to announce its mass market Model 3 (price $35,000), I’ve been thinking lately that the car I currently own may very well be the last gasoline car I ever own.
It’s still early days for road pricing and our mayor doesn’t seem to be a fan. So who knows how far we’ll get with this RFP. But I for one hope that we find the courage to make the difficult decisions and that this new revenue stream is leveraged for the purpose of building more sustainable forms of urban transport in this city.
Let’s make a 50 year decision and not an election cycle decision.
By accident, this week on Architect This City seems to be turning into Elon Musk week.
Yesterday, Musk announced something called the Powerwall home battery. Measuring about 3′ x 4′, the shield looking battery pack will charge using the electricity generated from solar panels (or from the grid when rates are at their lowest) and then power your home.
It’s designed for consumers and will cost between US$3,000 - $3,500 depending on capacity. The individual Powerwalls can also be daisy chained to increase capacity. It will be available starting this summer.
A wall battery may not seem all that interesting to some, but I think this is actually a big deal for a few reasons.
Renewable energy is often both intermittent and produced when you don’t need it. Here’s a great chart from Tesla that shows what I mean:
During peak solar hours, most people aren’t home and most people aren’t consuming at peak levels. That’s why it’s important to be able to store the energy that you collect, whether it be from solar, wind or other renewal energy source. And from what I hear from my friends in the industry, storage has been a bit of an Achilles heel for adoption.
It will also help to further decentralize energy production. What is produced locally (from say solar panels) will be stored locally for when it’s needed locally. This is in contrast to centralized production or producing energy locally and then feeding any excess capacity into the grid for use somewhere else. That requires transmission and will be by definition less efficient.
Finally, the other interesting thing about Powerwall is that it closes the loop on two of Musk’s businesses: SolarCity and Tesla. SolarCity is about the production of renewable energy and Tesla is about the consumption renewable energy. But as the chart above shows, storage is often needed to link those two activities in an efficient way.
All of this makes me excited about Powerwall.
If any of you are an expert in this industry (which I am not) or you just have additional thoughts, I would love to hear from you in the comment section below.
It’s designed for consumers and will cost between US$3,000 - $3,500 depending on capacity. The individual Powerwalls can also be daisy chained to increase capacity. It will be available starting this summer.
A wall battery may not seem all that interesting to some, but I think this is actually a big deal for a few reasons.
Renewable energy is often both intermittent and produced when you don’t need it. Here’s a great chart from Tesla that shows what I mean:
During peak solar hours, most people aren’t home and most people aren’t consuming at peak levels. That’s why it’s important to be able to store the energy that you collect, whether it be from solar, wind or other renewal energy source. And from what I hear from my friends in the industry, storage has been a bit of an Achilles heel for adoption.
It will also help to further decentralize energy production. What is produced locally (from say solar panels) will be stored locally for when it’s needed locally. This is in contrast to centralized production or producing energy locally and then feeding any excess capacity into the grid for use somewhere else. That requires transmission and will be by definition less efficient.
Finally, the other interesting thing about Powerwall is that it closes the loop on two of Musk’s businesses: SolarCity and Tesla. SolarCity is about the production of renewable energy and Tesla is about the consumption renewable energy. But as the chart above shows, storage is often needed to link those two activities in an efficient way.
All of this makes me excited about Powerwall.
If any of you are an expert in this industry (which I am not) or you just have additional thoughts, I would love to hear from you in the comment section below.
