Musk’s big ideas: The Tesla ute, electric semi, next gen Roadster – and VTOL jet!

Tesla founder Elon Musk has opened up about more details about the EV company’s upcoming plans for the future, including the highly anticipated Tesla pickup (which in Australia we call a ute), the Tesla electric semi and the next gen Roadster.

Musk revealed details late last week about the EV pickup, saying that its design will be “really futuristic like cyberpunk”, inspired by the 1982 sci-fi movie “Blade Runner”.

“I’m personally super-excited by this pickup truck,” Musk said. “This will be heart-stopping. It stops my heart. It’s like, oh, it’s great.”

But oddly – the Tesla CEO doesn’t care if anyone buys it.

“You know, I actually don’t know if a lot of people will buy this pickup truck or not, but I don’t care.”

Musk, who has previously described the electric pickup design as “next level“, put a call out on Twitter earlier this year to fans asking what would they, “love to see in a Tesla pickup truck?”

Responses abounded, and since then work on the development of the electric pickup has gone solidly underway.

Musk has even had a personal hand in the design, he also revealed in the interview with Recode Decode’s Kara Swisher, saying that he has been going over iterations with Tesla’s design chief Franz von Holzhausen, and that the cyberpunk design is “gonna have a lot of titanium”.

While the futuristic design may not be your average tradie’s cup of tea, Musk thinks that it will appeal to drivers who would not usually buy a pickup or ute – adding that if sales aren’t huge, “we’ll make a more conventional pickup truck”.

It might be a long shot, as the Tesla CEO and founder admits, but ultimately it’s another step towards Musk’s goal – getting fossil-fuel-hungry vehicles off the road to improve the state of our planet.

It’s the same motivation behind the electric semi, as Musk explained.

“Because semis are in constant use and use a tremendous amount of fuel, so the Tesla Semi, I think, can have a huge effect, positive effect,” he told Swisher.

“It’ll be like the heaviest class of truck, of industrial truck.”

With the ambition and motivation that is so characteristic of Tesla, Musk also went on to describe how the next generation Roadster will “be the fastest sports car on every dimension. Fastest acceleration, fastest top speed, best handling”.

“The goal with the Tesla Roadster is to show that an electric car can be the best sports car on every dimension.”

As Tesla continues to redefine the face of the global auto industry, one can only wonder what else its visionary CEO has in mind.

Asked if Tesla might consider making an electric jet (like Larry Page’s Cora passenger jet being tested in New Zealand), Musk said, “A supersonic vertical-takeoff-and-landing electric jet would be interesting to do at some point, I think.”

“But my head would definitely explode if I tried to do that right now. But I’ve been thinking about that design for nine years.”