Elon Musk still makes some of America’s best electric cars. Earlier this summer, I rented a brand-new, updated Tesla Model Y, the first refresh to the electric SUV since it debuted, in 2020. Compared with even just two years ago, when the Model Y became the world’s best-selling car, many companies make great EVs now. Some of them have the Model Y beat in certain areas, but for the price, the Tesla is still the total package.

Elon Musk 仍在打造全美最出色的电动汽车之一。今夏早些时候，我租了一辆全新的焕新版 Tesla Model Y——这是这款电动SUV自2020年首次亮相以来的首次改款。和仅仅两年前（当时 Model Y 成为全球最畅销车型）相比，如今不少公司也能做出很优秀的电动汽车（EV）。其中有些在某些方面确实胜过 Model Y，但就价格区间而言，Tesla 依然是综合表现最均衡的选择。

Now, imagine how good Teslas could be if Musk apparently wasn’t so bored with making them. With the exception of the struggling Cybertruck, Tesla hasn’t released an entirely new electric car in five years. Musk has indicated that he wants Tesla to primarily focus on building robotaxis and robots. Autonomous-vehicle technology “is the product that makes Tesla a ten-trillion company,” he told his biographer, Walter Isaacson. “People will be talking about this moment in a hundred years.” All the while, Tesla has continued to make almost all of its money from selling cars.

现在不妨想象一下，如果Musk并没有对造车感到厌倦，特斯拉还能做到多出色。除了举步维艰的Cybertruck之外，特斯拉在过去五年里没有发布过一款全新的电动车。Musk表示，他希望特斯拉主要专注于打造robotaxis（无人驾驶出租车）和机器人。他对其传记作者Walter Isaacson说，自动驾驶技术“是能让特斯拉成为一家十万亿美元公司的产品”。“一百年后人们还会谈论这一刻。”然而与此同时，特斯拉几乎所有的收入仍然来自卖车。

But now it’s clearer than ever that Tesla’s future is not in selling cars. The company’s latest “Master Plan IV,” which was released earlier this week, makes no mention of any new electric cars in the works. It is instead a technocratic fever dream, predicting a future in which humanoid robots made by Tesla free us from mundane tasks and create a utopia of “sustainable abundance.” To the extent that cars are mentioned at all, it’s in the context of robotaxis, or the batteries that power them. In other words, Tesla, the biggest EV company in the country, wants out of the car business.

但如今，比以往任何时候都更清楚，特斯拉的未来不在于卖车。本周早些时候发布的公司最新《Master Plan IV》（总体规划第四部分）中，没有提到任何正在研发的新电动车。相反，它更像一个“技术官僚式的狂热幻想”，预言由特斯拉制造的人形机器人会把人们从琐碎事务中解放出来，并创造一个“可持续的富足”的乌托邦。至于提到汽车，也只是出现在“robotaxis”（无人驾驶出租车）或为其提供动力的电池这一语境中。换句话说，作为美国国内最大的EV（电动汽车）公司，特斯拉想要退出汽车业务。

This new master plan—released on Musk’s platform, X, naturally—might be easy to ignore. The roughly 1,000-word document is exceedingly vague and includes language like this: “The hallmark of meritocracy is creating opportunities that enable each person to use their skills to accomplish whatever they imagine.” Even Musk conceded on X that the plan needs “more specifics.” But Tesla has released only three previous master plans since its founding in 2003, and generally, they have paved the way for Tesla’s future. The first one, published in 2006, laid out the path that Tesla would end up taking with its EVs: Start with an expensive electric car, then use the profits from that to branch out into more affordable ones. Nearly all of Tesla’s competition still follows the same road map. Then, in 2016, “Master Plan, Part Deux” stressed a deeper vision for more electric cars, including a future SUV that became the Model Y and “a new kind of pickup truck.” What that one was is pretty obvious today.

这份新的总体规划——理所当然地发布在马斯克的平台X上——可能很容易被忽略。约1000字的文件极其含糊，还包含这样的表述：“精英治理（meritocracy）的标志在于创造机会，使每个人都能运用自己的技能去实现他们想象的一切。”就连马斯克也在X上承认，这份计划需要“更具体的细节”。不过，自2003年成立以来，特斯拉此前只发布过三份总体规划，而且总体上它们都为特斯拉的未来铺路。第一份（2006年发布）规划了特斯拉在电动车上的路线：先从一款昂贵的电动车起步，再用其利润扩展到更亲民的车型。几乎所有特斯拉的竞争对手至今仍在遵循同一套路线图。随后在2016年，“Master Plan, Part Deux”（总体规划·第二部分）强调了更深入的电动车愿景，包括一款未来的SUV（后来成为Model Y）以及“一种全新的皮卡”。如今，那款皮卡是什么已不言自明。

If this week’s master plan reflects a company that is dead set on moving beyond cars, the divergence started back around the time of that second report. Even in 2016, Musk envisioned a future in which fully autonomous cars generated passive income for people while they worked or slept. The third master plan, released in 2023, is a 41-page white paper about the future of sustainable energy and how it could power fleets of autonomous vehicles. But the latest version is far more focused on AI than its predecessors were. Even just the visuals are telling: In one image in the master plan, a family plays Jenga on their coffee table while a Tesla robot waters the plants behind them. Right now, Musk has more of a reason than ever to go all in on robots: Today, Tesla’s board unveiled a new potential pay package for its CEO, promising him as much as $1 trillion—yes, trillion—if he meets certain targets, including deploying millions of robots and robotaxis in the next decade. (Tesla did not respond to a request for comment.)

如果本周的总体规划显示这家公司铁了心要超越汽车业务，那么这种分歧其实早在第二份报告发布前后就已出现。早在2016年，Musk就设想了这样一个未来：当人们工作或睡觉时，完全自动驾驶汽车能为他们创造“被动收入”。第三份总体规划于2023年发布，是一份41页的白皮书，讨论可持续能源的未来，以及它如何为大规模自动驾驶车队供能。但最新版本比前几版更加聚焦于AI。仅从配图就能看出端倪：在总体规划的一张图里，一家人正围着茶几玩叠叠乐（Jenga），而身后一个Tesla机器人在给植物浇水。眼下，Musk比以往任何时候都有理由在机器人上豪赌：今天，Tesla董事会公布了一份新的潜在CEO薪酬方案，如果他达成若干目标——包括在未来十年部署数百万个机器人与robotaxi（无人驾驶出租车）——他最多可获得高达1万亿美元（没错，trillion，万亿级别）的报酬。（Tesla未就置评请求作出回应。）

Granted, Musk is onto something here. Many in the auto industry believe that technologies such as electric power and autonomous driving will converge over time, which is why they’re bullish on EVs in the long term. But Musk’s view of that timeline is likely overly ambitious. Nobody’s making any “passive income” from a self-driving Tesla, as Musk said they would by 2020. Even its driverless “robotaxi” service is up and running in only Austin and San Francisco. Tesla is far behind Waymo, the driverless-taxi service owned by Google’s parent company that is picking up riders in five cities, and is quickly spreading to many more. Meanwhile, Tesla’s humanoid “Optimus” robot is unproven, and the project has reportedly struggled with delays and leadership turnover.

诚然，马斯克在这方面确实抓住了某些要点。许多汽车行业人士认为，电动化与自动驾驶等技术会随时间融合，这也是他们长期看好电动汽车（EVs）的原因。然而，马斯克对这一时间表的预期很可能过于激进。并没有人像他所说的那样，到2020年就能靠一辆自动驾驶的特斯拉赚取“被动收入”。即便其无人驾驶“robotaxi”（机器人出租车）服务，目前也只在奥斯汀和旧金山投入运营。特斯拉远远落后于Waymo——这是谷歌母公司（Alphabet）旗下的无人出租车服务，已在五座城市载客运营，并正迅速扩展到更多城市。与此同时，特斯拉的人形机器人“Optimus”（擎天柱）尚未被证明可行，据报道该项目一直饱受延期和管理层更迭之困。

But by betting everything on AI, Tesla is sacrificing the very thing that the company knows how to make so well: cars. Autonomy has already come at the expense of new EVs. Last year, Musk reiterated that he feels it would be “pointless” to make a $25,000 car unless it was fully autonomous. Tesla could be financing its self-driving-technology dreams by making that affordable EV or a more conventional pickup truck, but Musk seems to see that as some kind of distraction. If his master plan doesn’t pan out, there won’t be much left of Tesla. The company’s sales have collapsed across the world, in part because of Musk’s politics and in part because Tesla is getting hammered by EV newcomers from China. The master plan doesn’t outline any way forward.

但把一切赌注都押在AI上，Tesla正在牺牲它最擅长制造的东西：汽车。自动驾驶已经以牺牲新款电动车（EVs）的推出为代价。去年，Musk重申，除非能实现完全自动驾驶，否则造一款售价25,000美元的汽车“没有意义”。Tesla本可以通过推出那款亲民电动车，或一款更传统的皮卡，来为其自动驾驶技术梦想提供资金支持，但Musk似乎把这些视为干扰。如果他的“总体规划”无法兑现，Tesla可能所剩无几。该公司的全球销量已大幅下滑，部分原因在于Musk的政治立场，部分原因则是Tesla正被来自中国的新晋电动车企业猛烈挤压。而这份总体规划并未给出任何前进路径。

Musk has learned the hard way that making cars is a brutal business. The costs are high, and the profit margins are slim. Fighting over market share with Volkswagen and Ford isn’t an expedient way to colonize Mars. But Tesla’s retreat from the electric-car business is everyone’s loss. Tesla is a big reason that so many automakers have frantically begun to make EVs in the past few years. It showed the rest of the industry that if you build high-tech electric cars and they’re actually good, people will buy them. Under Donald Trump, as incentives to make and sell EVs are vanishing, plenty of automakers in America are already walking back their once-ambitious electric plans. If the biggest seller of EVs continues to move away from what it helped create, Americans will end up with cars that continue to pollute. That certainly doesn’t get us to a world of “sustainable abundance.”

马斯克用惨痛的教训明白了，造车是一门残酷的生意：成本高、利润薄。和大众（Volkswagen）、福特（Ford）厮杀市场份额，并不是通往“殖民火星”的捷径。可特斯拉从电动车业务抽身，对所有人都是损失。过去几年，许多车企之所以拼命上马EV（电动车），很大程度上是因为特斯拉。它向整个行业证明：只要把高科技电动车做得足够好，消费者就会买单。在Donald Trump执政之下，鼓励生产和销售EV的激励正在消失，美国不少车企开始撤回先前雄心勃勃的电动化计划。如果EV销量最大的厂商继续远离它曾帮助打造的这一事业，美国人最终开上的仍将是继续制造污染的汽车。而这显然无法把我们带向所谓的“sustainable abundance（可持续的富足）”。