Exclusive Interview with a Former Tesla Engineer: In - Depth Analysis of Tesla's Master Plan Part 4. What's the Real Ambition Behind the 10,000 - Word Blueprint?

A car company with a trillion-dollar market value is fully committed to developing robots. Is this just Elon Musk's technological delusion, or the biggest industrial opportunity in the next decade?

On September 2nd, Tesla officially released "Master Plan Part IV". This long-awaited strategic document by the market completely removed Tesla's label as an "electric vehicle manufacturer" and presented a completely different future scenario.

The reaction on Wall Street was surprisingly calm - Tesla's stock price only rose slightly by 0.8% after the release. But beneath the calm, a magnificent industrial restructuring is brewing.

Today, Silicon Rabbit has specially invited a former Tesla engineer to deeply dissect this plan. It not only concerns Tesla's future but also how we should understand the endgame of technology, industry, and capital in the next decade.

01

Looking back at Tesla's Master Plan series, we can clearly see the continuous expansion of a company's strategic vision:

Part I (2006): Validate the feasibility of electric vehicles and penetrate from the high - end to the mass market

Part II (2016): Expand to the energy ecosystem and autonomous driving

Part III (2023): Propose the vision of comprehensive electrification of global energy

Part IV (2025): Deep integration of AI and the physical world to achieve "Sustainable Abundance"

This is not a simple business expansion but a fundamental change in business philosophy.

In the first three versions of the blueprint, Tesla's vision revolved around "sustainable energy", with the core being to solve the environmental crisis caused by fossil fuels. In Part IV, Elon Musk proposed a more ambitious proposition - "Sustainable Abundance".

To achieve this goal, Tesla proposed five guiding principles as an action framework:

Growth is infinite: Technological innovation can break through resource constraints, and growth in one area does not have to come at the expense of decline in another area;

Innovation eliminates limitations: Break the inherent boundaries of the physical world through continuous technological breakthroughs (such as battery bottlenecks and energy efficiency);

Technology solves practical problems: Focus on core technologies such as solar energy, energy storage, autonomous driving, and Optimus to address real - world pain points such as traffic safety, dangerous labor, and energy shortages;

Automation benefits all of humanity: Ensure that technological development is centered on improving the general well - being, rather than being a privilege of a few;

Popularization drives growth: Mass - produce high - tech products at an affordable price to achieve technological democratization and social inclusiveness.

Elon Musk's vision of "Sustainable Abundance" essentially redefines the ceiling of capitalist growth.

For the past 200 years, economists have always believed that limited resources are the fundamental constraint on economic growth. But Musk believes that through AI and robot technology, humanity can break through the zero - sum game growth logic and create a symbiotic state of infinite resources and zero environmental burden.

What does this change mean for investors? Simply put: Investing in Tesla is no longer investing in a car company but betting on an integrated ecosystem of "AI + energy + robots".

02

Tesla's future is built on two major technological pillars: the humanoid robot Optimus and the autonomous driving Robotaxi.

Elon Musk clearly stated in the blueprint that in the future, about 80% of Tesla's value will come from the Optimus robot. This judgment is based on the huge potential of the global humanoid robot market - by 2050, the market size of humanoid robots will reach $5 trillion, far exceeding the current $3 trillion global automotive market.

Tesla's plan is astonishingly aggressive: The third - version prototype of Optimus will be launched by the end of 2025, mass production will start in 2026, and the five - year production capacity target is one million units per year.

This timeline makes many analysts question its feasibility. But the deeper logic lies in the qualitative change of technological integration.

Although the first three chapters involved autonomous driving (Part II) and energy networks (Part III), they always remained at the level of "application scenario expansion"; while Part IV for the first time used AI as the underlying driving technology and achieved "deep integration of AI and the physical world" through Optimus.

Tesla tries to transfer the large - scale production experience accumulated in the automotive field (such as the 4680 battery and the super - large die - casting machine) to robot manufacturing. At the same time, it uses the FSD's autonomous driving algorithm to enhance the robot's environmental perception ability, forming a technological closed - loop of "automobile - energy - AI - robot".

However, experts warn investors that the most important investment question is: How can Tesla maintain its lead in the highly competitive robot race?

The answer may lie in Tesla's unique vertical integration ability - from chip design, neural network training to the battery system, and then to large - scale manufacturing, Tesla is one of the few companies that master the entire industrial chain.

In the field of autonomous driving, Tesla is moving from the technology verification stage to full - scale commercialization:

It has launched the Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, USA.

It plans to expand to the Bay Area and other states by the end of 2025.

The goal is to increase the utilization efficiency of each vehicle by 5 - 10 times.

The commercialization of autonomous driving technology may achieve large - scale profitability earlier than that of robots. According to Musk's calculation, the average weekly usage time of a traditional car is only 10 hours, while that of a Robotaxi can be increased to 80 - 100 hours, which means a revolutionary improvement in the efficiency of the transportation system.

When a car is no longer just a car but a mobile AI terminal; when a robot is no longer just science fiction but a household necessity, the boundaries of traditional industries will be completely re - structured.

03

Of course, the grander the blueprint, the louder the doubts. As a former Tesla engineer, the expert reminds investors that they must see the other side. The biggest risk actually comes from Tesla's history. Remember?

On Elon Musk's "promise list" in the past, there are already many unfulfilled items. From autonomous driving to clean energy, a series of missed targets are eroding investors' trust and making the new plan more like a risky "crying wolf" game.

Looking back at the "Master Plan 2.0" in 2016, Musk vowed to launch electric semi - trucks and driverless taxi services. But ten years later, the electric bus is still in the concept stage, and even he himself has to admit that "these products have not been brought to the market."

More ironically, the Cybercab (Robotaxi) released by Tesla in 2024 will not be mass - produced until 2026 at the earliest, while its Chinese competitor, "Luobo Kuaipao", entered the trial operation stage in Wuhan in July 2024, with a time difference of up to two years.

After ten years of promotion, the solar roof business still accounts for less than 5% of the revenue, and the repeated price increases have led to low market acceptance. The "240TWh energy storage and 30TW renewable power generation" proposed in Part III has been criticized as a "castles in the air" due to the "lack of a specific implementation path".

As the technology media Electrek sharply pointed out, many of Musk's plans are more like "marketing declarations rather than implementable plans". When the "crying wolf" story is repeated, the market's confidence in the "Master Plan IV" will inevitably waver.

Now, Optimus has to shoulder the heavy responsibility of "80% of the value" in just a few years, and there are huge uncertainties in its technological maturity, mass - production ability, and market acceptance.

Is this leap from "sustainable energy" to "sustainable abundance" Elon Musk's foresight, or just another "pie in the sky"? The answer may be left to time to test, but one thing is certain: Tesla has placed its bet on the humanoid robot race.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Silicon Rabbit" (ID: gh_1faae33d0655). Author: Silicon Rabbit. Republished by 36Kr with permission.