Recently, Tesla reported its fourth quarter vehicle deliveries for the year of 2021. The company delivered over 300,000 vehicles in Q4 of 2021. This means Tesla delivered about 936,000 vehicles for the year. In the year of 2020 Tesla delivered about 499,000 vehicles. Thus in 2021, Tesla delivered 87% more vehicles compared to just one year ago. Nearly doubling vehicles delivered in one year is no small feat. Especially when it comes to manufacturing with supply chain issues. These factors compound when you add the global pandemic as a factor. This influenced people to spend more on their necessities rather than luxuries.
Despite these factors, Tesla was still able to have a growing demand and produce more vehicles than the year before! This trend of explosive growth has been almost normal for Tesla. This kind of growth has been happening repeatedly for the last few years. Although we can see where Tesla’s growth now, we don’t really know where Tesla is going. It is important to consider the roadmap Tesla has for its future. Especially with the momentous success they are having.
Tesla’s Master Plan
Tesla has actually outlined its major objectives it wants to accomplish in the years coming. In fact Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, wrote about the company’s plan years ago on Tesla’s website. He wrote two posts concerning Tesla’s future, one called “The Master Plan” and the second called “Master Plan, Part Deux”. We will be looking at the second post as it is more relevant. Click the link to view Tesla’s master plan! https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux
Points of The Master Plan
There are three main objectives in the second iteration of Tesla’s master plan and are as follows:
- Achieve a seamless integration of solar roof power and energy storage
- Expand upon the electric vehicle product line to meet commercial markets
- Achieve fully autonomous self-driving vehicles
These objectives are extremely difficult to achieve. However, the direction of Tesla is predictable by viewing the past and present. Recently, in Tesla’s earnings call for Q4 2021, Elon Musk spoke to all three of these objectives during the statements sections as well as the questions section of the call.
Current Status on Tesla’s Objectives
In the short term, Musk emphasizes that supply chain issues are not expected to alleviate quickly. Thus, Tesla will not be adding/releasing any new vehicles to their vehicle line-up this year. Doing so would complicate manufacturing dramatically and cause the company to produce less cars instead of more. Thus in the near-term, Tesla will focus on maintaining and improving its manufacturing during sustained supply chain struggles.
Also in the near future, Musk is excited for full-self driving (FSD) vehicles. He believes that FSD will be revolutionary to how we do transportation of people and cargo. FSD is getting closer to reality every day. Tesla’s fleet of cars gathers more and more data that their FSD algorithm can use to become more autonomous.
Lastly, Musk did not discuss solar power and energy integration as much as the other two points. However, Musk stated that unforeseen complications continue to slow down the progress on Tesla’s solar endeavors. According to the master plan, Tesla hopes to bring solar power & energy integration to the scale of their electric vehicles. This way every home could afford to produce their own power. Once again, due to complications in this goal, progress has stagnated. On a final note, Musk did briefly mention Tesla HVAC units the company is designing for homes. So, although solar has stagnated, it is clear that Tesla is more broadly venturing into systems that can improve home energy efficiency.
Tesla’s Plans for Near Future & Beyond
From the master plan and the recent earnings call, I have come up with a few conclusions about Tesla in the near future. For the year of 2022 and 2023, it appears Tesla’s largest priority is manufacturing. Thus, for 2022, Tesla will solely be focused on this. Once supply chain issues begin to alleviate, hopefully starting in 2023, I think it is likely Tesla will expand their vehicle lineup. Tesla had originally planned to expand earlier but decided not to because of pandemic related issues.
Next, I think within 2-8 years Tesla will have a fully operational FSD algorithm. This algorithm should be able to be applied to any Tesla vehicle. This would provide a large opportunity for Tesla as they would be the first to claim FSD.
Lastly, Tesla’s solar integration with homes objective seems to be taking a different direction. Originally, the objective was solar-integration. However, I think Tesla may be headed towards multiple home related systems instead of only solar as the focus. I think this objective will take at least 10 years to be fully realized. Especially if unforeseen complications continue to arise related to home systems.
Overall, Tesla continues to have growing demand despite the circumstances and also continues to grow explosively to meet their demand. Over the past few years, Tesla has constantly beat expectations. Therefore, I think Tesla will be able to fully realize its Master Plan sooner than we all realize.
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