This is why big incumbent car companies will lose against people like Tesla. The amount of organisational energy and capital required for a project like this is huge, and it's pay off..? Not so sure.
This is exactly the kind of project that Elon would announce. Things with high upfront cost, nebulous goals of improving the state of the art for technology, and a gamble on future payoff, are essentially the checklist for Elon Musk projects.
Now, there’s potentially a worthwhile discussion about why Elon has seen more success with these kinds of endeavors than larger incumbents have seen, but it’s exactly an Elon-style project.
"SolarCity" ...city... “People do not understand the magnitude of the business," Musk said. "Solar will be the single largest source of electricity generation".
I was talking about Elon’s overall portfolio, of which Tesla and SpaceX are both examples. But if you’re specifically curious about Tesla, I’d point out that Tesla’s mission was to give everybody an electric car, and they decided to start from ~“make a crazy fast electric sports car” and go from there. Along the way, some ancillary nebulous goals ~“also become experts in building our own batteries” and ~”also solar for everybody’s homes”.
Good question, but my first thought was to ask what is nebulous about this project. It has clearly stated goals and Toyota has identified tech and capital.
Now, there’s potentially a worthwhile discussion about why Elon has seen more success with these kinds of endeavors than larger incumbents have seen, but it’s exactly an Elon-style project.