Master Plan, Part Deux | Tesla
The first master plan that I wrote 10 years ago is now in the final stages of completion. It wasn't all that complicated and basically consisted of:
Create a low volume car, which would necessarily be expensive
Use that money to develop a medium volume car at a lower price
Use that money to create an affordable, high volume car
And...
Provide solar power. No kidding, this has literally been on our website for 10 years.
The reason we had to start off with step 1 was that it was all I
could afford to do with what I made from PayPal. I thought our chances
of success were so low that I didn't want to risk anyone's funds in the
beginning but my own. The list of successful car company startups is
short. As of 2016, the number of American car companies that haven't
gone bankrupt is a grand total of two: Ford and Tesla. Starting a car
company is idiotic and an electric car company is idiocy squared.
Also, a low volume car means a much smaller, simpler factory, albeit
with most things done by hand. Without economies of scale, anything we
built would be expensive, whether it was an economy sedan or a sports
car. While at least some people would be prepared to pay a high price
for a sports car, no one was going to pay $100k for an electric Honda
Civic, no matter how cool it looked.
Part of the reason I wrote the first master plan was to defend
against the inevitable attacks Tesla would face accusing us of just
caring about making cars for rich people, implying that we felt there
was a shortage of sports car companies or some other bizarre rationale.
Unfortunately, the blog didn't stop countless attack articles on exactly
these grounds, so it pretty much completely failed that objective.
