Musk reveals plan to scale Tesla to ‘extreme size’ – TechCrunch

Elon Musk signaled plans to scale Tesla to the “extreme” while teasing the release of Tesla’s “Master Plan Part 3” on Twitter one day before opening the automaker’s first European factory.

On Monday, Musk revealed on Twitter the themes that will dominate the next installment in Tesla’s long-term playbook: artificial intelligence and scaling the automaker’s operations.

“Main Tesla subjects will be scaling to extreme size, which is needed to shift humanity away from fossil fuels, and AI,” Musk tweeted. “But I will also include sections about SpaceX, Tesla and The Boring Company.”

The plan may detail what “extreme size” looks like for Tesla and outline the automaker’s strategy for scaling its manufacturing and supply chain amid a global pandemic and supply chain crunch.

Tesla is scheduled to open its first factory in Europe on Tuesday. The $5 billion factory in Berlin is slated to produce more than half a million electric vehicles annually in a bid to compete with Volkswagen – the largest automaker in Europe – and its $100 billion investment in EVs.

Last week, Tesla idled its round-the-clock Shanghai Gigafactory for two days amid a rise in China’s Omicron cases and supply chain constraints. That factory produces about 2,000 vehicles per day and exports a significant number of Model 3 and Model Y vehicles to Europe.

The first two parts of the “Master Plan” proved to be an accurate road map to the development of the company’s products and technology; the first part, a 2006 blog post titled “The Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan (just between you and me),” outlined Tesla’s proof of concept.

A decade later, Musk’s Master Plan update, “Part Deux,” discussed plans to develop battery storage and launch new models, including a battery-electric pickup truck and SUV. Now that the company is nearing the end of the second part, Musk took to Twitter to begin teasing Tesla’s next chapter.

This is also the first time the Master Plans will focus on separate Musk companies, fueling speculation that he may intend to create an umbrella company to keep all of his companies under one roof. However, the tweet’s reference to SpaceX and The Boring Company could also allude to future collaborations between the companies.