Elon Musk reveals master plan at Tesla Investor Day 2023 - Robots, self-driving cars, space civilisation and more

During Tesla’s Investor Day 2023 event held at the Austin, Texas Gigafactory, CEO Elon Musk unveiled his third Master Plan that aims to establish a sustainable energy economy. 

Musk’s goal is to develop 240 terawatt hours (TWH) of energy storage and 30 TWH of renewable power generation, which would require a $10 trillion investment, roughly 10 per cent of the global GDP. 

However, Musk mentioned that this figure is less than half of what we currently spend on the internal combustion economy. Musk anticipates that less than 0.2 per cent of the world’s land area will be needed to create the necessary solar and wind generation capacity.

Musk also revealed that the company’s production capacity will experience a significant growth spurt, with the help of AI, as part of the third Master Plan. The plan’s aim is to establish a fully electric and autonomous transportation system, which Musk believes will soon replace ICE vehicles. He also teased the possibility of electrifying aircraft and ships but did not provide any details on how or when that would be accomplished.

"You could support a civilization much bigger than Earth [currently does]. Much more than the 8 billion humans could actually be supported sustainably on Earth and I'm just often shocked and surprised by how few people realize this," Musk said.

Tesla executives Lars Moravy and Franz von Holzhausen talked about the “production hell” and the challenges of building the Cybertruck out of stainless steel at the event. Moravy argued that the lessons learned from the Cybertruck will help the company build its next generation of vehicles in a more efficient manner, and within a far smaller factory footprint. von Holzhausen announced that the Cybertruck will arrive later this year, which is a significantly closer date than Musk’s previous public estimate that production would not begin until next year.

The engineers revealed that Tesla will cut assembly costs by half in future generations of cars, but a much-awaited small, affordable electric vehicle was not unveiled.

Tesla teased a new video featuring the Tesla Robot walking independently and without the aid of a support frame, but there was no live demonstration of the same. Despite difficulties finding suitable off-the-shelf actuators and motors for the humanoid robot platform, Musk expects the company's robots to become so successful that we may soon see a day when they outnumber humans. "I think we might exceed a one-to-one ratio of robots to humans," Musk said.

The Tesla stock is down about 50 per cent from its peak in November 2021 but has recuperated more than 60 per cent this year.

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