plan

Tesla’s latest “Master Plan” makes a few things clear right out of the gate: the company that was once known for accelerating the push toward a brighter future by popularizing electric vehicles and renewable energy is no longer interested in that quotidian stuff. Now, it’s all about artificial intelligence, humanoid robots, self-driving cars, and the new buzzy catchphrase that is currently lighting up the tech world: “sustainable abundance.”

At a breezy 983 words, Master Plan 4 is the shortest entry in the company’s ongoing series of mission statements. It’s the first one to be posted on X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, rather than on Tesla’s website. And it reads like it was written by the platform’s chatbot, Grok, with repeated use of em dashes and a suspiciously utopian tone about the future of AI and robotics.

But is it actually AI generated? It hardly matters, because the substance of the Master Plan is so vague, so empty, and so devoid of concrete proposals that it barely casts a shadow.

Making technologically advanced products that are affordable and available at scale is required to build a flourishing and unconstrained society. It serves to further democratize society while raising everyone’s quality of life in the process. The hallmark of meritocracy is creating opportunities that enable each person to use their skills to accomplish whatever they imagine.

Compare that to the first Master Plan, published in 2006, which outlined the company’s desire to build an electric sports car, then use the revenue generated to build successively more affordable electric vehicles. Or Master Plan 2, published in 2016, which calls for building electric semi trucks and buses, developing self-driving vehicles, and then allowing customers to use those vehicles as profit-generating robotaxis. Or Master Plan 3, published in 2023, which positioned Tesla to lead the global effort to eliminate fossil fuels and convert the world to sustainable energy.

This is big, heady stuff! Sure, Tesla has barely touched the goals it listed in the second Master Plan, but at least they were goals in the traditional sense. This latest iteration is pure fluff. It risks floating away on a current of its own self-regard.

To be fair, a lot has happened between the third Master Plan and today. Elon Musk bought Twitter and transformed it into X. He founded xAI to compete in the global race to develop generative AI tools. He launched the Cybertruck, which subsequently flopped. He poured $300 million into the election of Donald Trump and then oversaw the slashing of billions of dollars from the federal government in the name of “efficiency.”

The damage to Tesla’s brand was staggering. The company’s sales are in decline in all major markets across the world, thanks to growing competition and Musk’s political affiliations. Tesla’s attempts to recapture some of that old magic, with robots and robotaxis, have been largely unsuccessful. This new plan is the latest effort to rekindle some sort of vision.

This latest iteration is pure fluff. It risks floating away on a current of its own self-regard.

If you’re confused about what Tesla is promising, you’re not alone. X users commented that the plan “reads more like a glorified TED Talk than a Gannt Chart with deadlines and KPIs.” Instead, we get philosophical talk about “infinite growth, AI solving scarcity, and robots freeing up your time.” The previous Master Plans were visionary documents, too, but with more of an emphasis on deliverable products and action items, rather than amorphous platitudes and buzzword salad.

To be sure, Elon Musk seems to regret some of the things that were included in the previous plans. In a recent post on X, he admitted that second plan remains unfinished, but promises that it will be complete by “next year.” Master Plan 3 was “too complex for almost anyone to understand,” he said, touting the fourth plan as “concise.”

The focus on “sustainable abundance” is telling. We’ve been hearing a lot about abundance these days, mostly from the eponymous book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson that outlines a plan for more housing, more clean energy, and more prosperity — as achieved through deregulation and higher productivity. There’s also the Abundance Institute, a think tank focused on innovation and prosperity with a heavy focus on AI policy.

But the idea of “abundance” has since achieved escape velocity and now seems to be an umbrella term for libertarians and centrist Democrats to push back against leftists and democratic socialists calling for universal healthcare and higher taxes on the rich.

To me, the more telling word choice in Master Plan 4 is “infinite.” The document declares that “growth is infinite,” suggesting that traditional barriers like labor, real estate, finances, or natural resources should not stand in the way of Tesla’s upward trajectory.

It’s one of Musk’s favorite rhetorical devices. He has described customer demand in Tesla’s vehicles as “infinite.” The Cybertruck’s towing capacity is also “infinite.” (It’s actually rated for 11,000 lbs, which last I checked is a long way off from infinite.)

What it really is — to borrow another phrase from the Tesla playbook — is ludicrous. The company’s self-driving cars don’t really drive themselves, solar roofs are on the back burner, the mythical $25,000 “Model 2” got canceled, and your Tesla won’t make you money while you sleep. Its robots can’t even serve a bucket of popcorn without some heavy human involvement.

Musk is high on his own supply, and this latest Master Plan is evidence of that.

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