A new Tesla Motors Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) is set to emerge at the end of the coming four years if you listen to CEO Elon Musk’s predictions. Musk has his sight set on dramatically increasing Tesla’s car production capacity and expanding deeper into the autonomous car market.
Tesla wants to get to a point where it can produce 500,000 cars annually by 2018. The company only delivered 50,000 cars in 2015 and hopes to deliver at least 80,000 in 2016.
The Gigafactory transformation
But Tesla’s success in dramatically increasing production and sales in the next four years will largely depend on its massive battery factory being constructed in Nevada. The so-called Gigafactory will produce the lithium-ion cells that Tesla will use to power its vehicles.
The company is betting that the Gigafactory will both pave way for cost-cutting in battery acquisition and eliminate battery shortage. It has to be remembered that shortage of battery supply has been cited as one of the reasons Tesla’s car production remains strained.
When it comes to cost-cutting, Tesla is hoping that the Gigafactory will allow it to eliminate as much as 30% in battery costs once the facility is completed and becomes fully operational. As for removing supply shortage, Tesla boasts that the Nevada-based Gigafactory will produce battery cells equivalent to what all battery makers in the world produced in 2013.
The Gigafactory will also see Tesla become an energy company far from being an automaker. Tesla is looking at the energy backup market with batteries that can store energy from renewable sources such as wind and solar.
Mass market car
Tesla wants to enter the auto mass market to increase sales. Its mass market nameplate Model 3 is expected to enter production in late 2017 with deliveries beginning in early 2018. The Model 3 will be priced and $35,000 to offer a range of over than 200 miles on a single charge.
Increase battery range
Officially, Tesla’s Model S can take you 265 miles on a single charge, but people have sometimes done amazing things with it to the extent that the car has gone 497 miles (800 kilometers) on a single charge. Now Tesla wants to increase the range of its cars to hit or exceed 1,000 kilometers or 621 miles before 2020.
Hands-free driving
Tesla wants to make its cars fully autonomous by 2018. Its autonomous driving feature Autopilot is already generating excitement and Tesla wants to enhance its performance. But the fear is that regulators will likely not have put laws in place to allow autonomous driving by the time Tesla completes work on its fully autonomous driving feature. In that case, while the technology will be there, but Tesla drivers may not enjoy it until regulators put the necessary laws in place.
