That Tesla would expand into heavy duty transport and public transportation was predictable. It is a no brainer when you have a global supercharger network and are making fully autonomous vehicle tech as Tesla has and do. Once that tech is ready for one vehicle type it is not difficult to make it work for other vehicle types and the battery cells will mostly also be the same across different battery electric vehicle types. So Tesla will be able to scale production even more by doing more vehicle types using much of the same tech. To be sure, in the auto industry scaling production is essential for decreasing production cost.

If you read Tesla’s announcement (see link below) I also find it interesting that Musk say that his company now is mostly about developing machines (factories) that make other machines (cars and power systems). The engineering challenge is not so much about developing the product (the vehicle or power system) but mostly about developing the factory that makes the vehicles or solar-battery panels. This is very different from a company like Apple that only design products like phones and leave it to others to make the factories that make those products. In transportation costs per mile is extremely important and the only way to get lower cost per mile is to make better and bigger factories that can produce the vehicles at lower cost and to be more durable so that they can log a lot of miles before breaking down.

Interesting that Tesla is now also working on “a new kind of pickup truck”. No mention of a roadster successor as he has promised will come in other tweets. I think a new roadster (a Porsche 911 killer) will come but that Musk deliberately omitted mentioning it in order not to bring attention to secondary objectives’ which a new roadster is when compared to the rest of the new master plan.

It is a truly brilliant idea to make all Tesla cars fully autonomous and make Tesla vehicle owners able to add their car to a Tesla taxi fleet when not using the car themselves. So Tesla owners will be able to make serious money renting out their cars to Tesla and Tesla can operate a huge global fleet with millions of Tesla Taxis without needing to finance that fleet themselves. Service like cleaning the vehicles could be done by the Tesla vehicle owner and technical service is done by Tesla’s service centers of cause. Retrospectively that is an obvious idea but I did not predict this coming prior to this announcement.

https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux

Another interesting comment by Musk is that I quote “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.”

On this issue I think Musk is a bit optimistic. It is more likely that it will be about 6 billion miles for each unique driving regime like 6 billion miles for USA, another 6 billion for Europe and another 6 billion for China. On a global scale one traffic death occur for every 60 million mile so driving 6 billion miles should generate 100 deaths in an average car. If Tesla can make it with only 50 deaths for 6 billion miles they can say that their cars will save lives with certainty when operated with Autopilot on. That could trigger an approval by the regional authority for Tesla to operate their cars with full autonomy i.e. no driver oversight whatsoever. You need 50 deaths minimum to make a good statistics that is representative for the entire population. In order to generate 6 billion miles in one year you need 400,000 cars doing 15,000 miles per year each. You also need to make a fresh 6 billion miles every year because you can expect the autopilot software to be significantly improved during the year so we need to redo the statistics. Musk makes it clear that their goal is to make a fully self-driving autopilot that is ten times safer than a human operated car or only 10 deaths per 6 billion miles. I expect such a system to be done and documented by 2025.

Tesla is the only auto maker in the world that systematically gathers accident data on all of their cars both online and by means of black-boxes that collect the info and store it in case the traffic accident destroyed the cars online data gathering system. Google’s 50 test vehicles is going nowhere in terms of the needed 400,000 cars per region. Tesla is getting their fast with an expected production of 500,000 cars for 2018 and perhaps a 1,000,000 cars for 2020. I expect all of Tesla’s cars to come with the needed hardware for fully autonomous driving by end of 2017. It will take 2 years more to get the software fully autonomous. I expect Tesla will get the first authorizations to operate their cars fully autonomously by 2020. I guess the US will be first because this is the country they will have 400k Tesla cars first with the tech that makes them fully autonomous.

I think the new pickup truck will share the same chassis as the minibus Tesla will also make. So Tesla will have three chassis sizes. One for the model 3 and a new compact SUV (with falcon doors). A larger one for model S and X and the largest one for that pickup truck and minibus. 15000 lb towing capacity might be possible especially because it will not be geared for high speed driving but for high towing capacity. I expect a larger battery also (at least 110 kwh). I also expect the pickup truck to be able to supply power at a construction site. It can do that without the noise and smell from a diesel generator. It could drive autonomously away to get charged at a supercharger station near the construction site while another Tesla pickup truck take over the power supply at the construction site again autonomously. However, the autonomous pickup truck will be expensive (cost more than the model X) and therefore it will not be a high volume car. The minibus that will share its chassis will be the volume vehicle. I expect Tesla to “sell it” to a new Transportation division in Tesla that could provide public transportation services for cities using that minibus. I expect the fully autonomous minibus to have falcon doors for each seat. It may possibly only have 6 or 8 seats and a large luggage compartment. I don’t expect to see either the pickup truck or the minibus for sale until Tesla has made a fully autonomous autopilot because these vehicles will need it to make economic sense. So 2020 at the earliest.

A few thoughts about the heavy duty Semi truck that Tesla is also developing. I expect it to look very much like a diesel powered heavy duty Semi truck and it will have a cabin with a human driver. The problem is that Tesla needs to make a conventional looking Semi with a human driver to develop the special Auto Pilot system for that heavy duty truck. Driving a heavy duty truck is a very different experience than driving an ordinary car like a Model X. I know because during my military duty I got a driver license for a heavy duty truck with trailer. The autopilot for the Semi will be based on quite different algorithms. So Tesla needs to start with a conventional design with a human driver and that also can be used with existing infrastructure for semi trucks. I also expect the semi-truck to come with a 400 kwh battery that can transport a standard 12 ton semi-trailer for about 100 miles before a new semi-truck with a fully charged battery is required. The business model is that Tesla will make the supercharger stations available and service the vehicles and the Transportation companies will buy the trucks and operate them. Once the semi-trucks gets fully autonomous Tesla will take over the operation of the trucks but they will still be owned by the transportation companies that now uses Tesla’s system to book the transport for their customers. If a transportation company cannot book their autonomous trucks 100% of the time they can make them available for Tesla that will used them for other transportation companies that need capacity beyond their own fleet and so forth. Again the beauty of this business model is that Tesla does not need to tie up precious capital in their own fleet of trucks but can spend the capital they make to expand production for their battery electric and autonomous semi-trucks.

I think the Tesla pickup will be comparable to the F350. However, it will start at 80k USD and not 40k USD as the F350. So Tesla needs their pickup to be fully autonomous before they launch it or it will not be the economic choice for the American heartland. When it is fully autonomous it will be easy to rent out to others when you don’t need it yourself. It also needs to do more than the F350 can do and working as a noise and smokeless generator that could deliver 100kwatt for one hour or 20k watt for five hours would be a useful thing for many and will also make it more attractive for renting out to others via Tesla’s fleet services.

It's full of false news in the medias and frauds on the stock market.

I think the Tesla pickup will be much like the F350 in size and towing ability but it will come with two or three battery pack options say 110kwh, 130kwh and 150kwh. 200kwh is not needed I think. If you really need it just load a 100kwh Tesla powerpack or two at the back of the pickup and connect it or load 10 of them at a gooseneck and connect it. I would not be surprised to see Tesla launch it only when it can be fully autonomous as that would guarantee its commercial success. A pickup that could get you heavy equipment without spending time to drive that pickup would be really attractive for any construction site or farmer. I am fully convinced Tesla can have such a beast ready by 2020 or 2022 at the latest.