One year later, Tesla and Musk still don’t have a good definition of ‘abundance’

On September 1, 2025, Elon Musk laid out his fourth “Master Plan” for Tesla, which was immediately criticized by some of his most ardent fans for being generic. Musk agreed and promised to add more specifics.

They never came. But that hasn’t stopped Musk and other Tesla executives from spending much of the past year promising that the company’s many futuristic efforts — robotaxis, robots, AI — are all parts of a grander machine that will create an era of “amazing abundance.”

What that means, more than a year later, is still tricky to pin down.

The topline promises of the plan have remained big and bawdy even as its tagline has changed from sustainable abundance — a clearer connection to the company’s former mission — to the “amazing abundance” slogan, which Musk chose because it was “more joyful.”

Musk has talked about a far-flung future where robots and AI do surgery and increase access to medical care.

He has said the proliferation of AI and robotics means that “everyone can have a penthouse if they want.” He (virtually) shouted “Amazing abundance for all!” in a quote-tweet of a post from Midjourney founder David Holz, who had claimed 5 million humanoid robots could “build Manhattan in ~6 months.” In July, Musk told Economist editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes that amazing abundance means “anyone can have anything they can think of.”

He also mentioned on Joe Rogan’s podcast late last year that “sustainable abundance” would mean “we haven’t destroyed nature” or “paved the rainforest” and we still “have the national parks,” despite supporting two politicians — Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro — who have actively worked against those goals. He appears to have only made this particular claim once, though.

Practical details are basically nonexistent, though. Does Musk really think that people want to build three billion nearly-empty apartment buildings with an average of two to three tenants to each lone penthouse? He doesn’t say.

Tesla and Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment.

While some of these ideas sound like the kind of proclamations uttered after a hearty bong rip in freshman housing, Tesla hasn’t treated them as frivolous. Quite the opposite: Master Plan IV became a central justification for handing Musk a $1 trillion pay package in 2025.

Tesla has said in regulatory filings that the “product goals” in that comp package — 20 million vehicles delivered, 10 million active subscriptions to Full Self-Driving, and deploying one million each of its robotaxis and robots — play a “key role” in supporting Musk’s “vision” of abundance. Tesla’s chair Robyn Denholm called this out in a letter to shareholders after they approved the $1 trillion plan last November.

“[Y]ou support the vision embodied by Master Plan Part IV and want us to keep steering Tesla toward the extraordinary future we all see ahead,” Denholm wrote. “A world that is not ‘zero-sum’ but instead one in which we can and will accelerate global prosperity for all by creating a safer, cleaner and more enjoyable world. In a year when many tried to sow doubt and negativity, you chose a better future.”

Further down in that letter, Denholm lionized Tesla shareholders for having “reaffirmed” their “belief in a trailblazer who has turned Tesla into one of the most valuable companies in history and who continues to push humanity closer to a future of sustainable abundance for all.”

Denholm said this was “not just a slogan,” but that it “is about bringing about the best future you can imagine.” Of course, Musk’s reworked version is definitely a slogan. In August, Tesla applied to trademark “amazing abundance” to be used for all sorts of things, from cars and robots to stickers, bags, cups, and even bottle openers.

Perhaps Musk and Tesla have kept things broad because, when pushed even slightly, the world’s richest man acknowledges some limits. In a November 2025 conference appearance, Musk said Tesla’s robots “will be able to make anyone a house,” or even a castle — “as long as you don’t just insist on it being in a particular location.”

Desirable locations are a finite resource in a world with 8 billion people, especially as the globe heats up and some places become inhospitable to human life — a problem Tesla spent years nominally trying to solve, until Musk changed the mission last year.

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Sean O’Kane is a reporter who has spent a decade covering the rapidly-evolving business and technology of the transportation industry, including Tesla and the many startups chasing Elon Musk. Most recently, he was a reporter at Bloomberg News where he helped break stories about some of the most notorious EV SPAC flops. He previously worked at The Verge, where he also covered consumer technology, hosted many short- and long-form videos, performed product and editorial photography, and once nearly passed out in a Red Bull Air Race plane.

You can contact or verify outreach from Sean by emailing sean.okane@techcrunch.com or via encrypted message at okane.01 on Signal.