Free Driving Forever Is The Future We Want To Live In
There was a lot of investor panic when Tesla announced its intention to merge SolarCity and form a potentially massive energy corporation. Elon Musk was very upbeat about the opportunity and said that the combined entity could be worth a trillion dollars in the future.
Skeptics, though, saw this move as nothing but a bailout for SolarCity that has been struggling with debt and may even have shut down operations if things did not change in the future. It is also difficult to see the synergy between a car company and one that sells and installs solar panels on roofs.
Additional debt that SolarCity brings with it will be added to the debt that Tesla already has and this has made investors a little squeamish. So what could be some of the reasons that Elon Musk and Tesla want SolarCity to integrate with it?
Tesla wants to sell Powerwalls
Tesla introduced an elegant method to store excess power generated from solar panels and allow consumers to live longer off grid. This is one aspect of its business that integrates perfectly with SolarCity.
Tesla also gets access to a workforce that is trained in selling long term leases as well as a database of potential customers to which it can hard sell its power storage units.
Powerwalls also act as an important method to hedge against a drop in the amount of money paid out to people selling their excess solar power to the utilities. This is something that happened in Nevada and added years to the amount of time people would need to break even on their investment.
Also, in states where the cost of electricity is high, these power storage units will allow users to move off-grid during peak times and thus save a significant amount of money during the lifetime of their product.
So Will We See A Solar Rooftop on Tesla Cars Soon?
You will almost certainly not see a solar roof on any Tesla cars ever. The reason for that is very simple. There is room for of around 1square meter on top of a Tesla Roadster which would produce around 263 kWh per year in ideal situations. Unfortunately, though, the car is not going to be in the sun throughout and in fact spend most of its time indoor or in the shade.
Still, a generous 150kWh of energy can be estimated to be produced in a year which would add less than 2 miles per day to the range of the car.
It’s just not worth the effort.
Free Driving Forever
What Tesla is hoping to achieve with its propagation of solar panels on the roof of all of its owners is take the Tesla truly off-grid and make transportation completely sustainable. Advances in the technology of production of solar panels should make them more affordable and efficient than ever before.
People would be able to produce most of the energy needed for their homes as well as charge their Tesla cars, essentially fuelling their cars for free.
