Plenty of people have big ideas for saving the world. Far fewer have elaborate plans for bringing their vision to life, and very few in history have come as close as Tesla Motors chief executive Elon Musk to pulling the whole thing off.

Musk’s zero-carbon dream is of a world with a self-driving electric vehicle (EV) in every driveway, near-invisible solar cells on every rooftop, and a battery system on the side of every home. 

It’s