In its pursuit to offer increasingly affordable sustainable energy, Tesla Motors wants to complete the picture with SolarCity.
Apart from designing, manufacturing, and selling electric cars and electric vehicle powertrain components, Tesla offers various battery products, which allows homeowners, business owners and utilities to benefit from renewable energy storage through Tesla’s Energy’s Powerwall and Powerpack.
Now, besides offering clean cars and battery packs to help consume energy more efficiently, the Silicon Valley-based firm wants to access the most sustainable energy source available: the sun. That’s why Tesla announced that it has made a $2.8 billion offer – according to Reuters – to acquire SolarCity, with plans to provide integrated solar powered charging systems for its customers.
Co-founded by Elon Musk, the struggling solar-power company (which has about $6.24 billion in liabilities, including debt) designs, finances, and installs solar power systems. According Tesla’s CEO, the acquisition of SolarCity is a “no brainer”, as the company could sell customers an electric car, a home battery and a solar system all at once.
“Instead of making three trips to a house to put in a car charger and solar panels and battery pack, you can integrate that into a single visit. It’s an obvious thing to do. From a consumer standpoint you walk into a Tesla store and in one place you can say ‘I’d like a great solar solution with an electric battery,’ and you are done. In five minutes you are done. It’s completely painless, easy and it just works”, Musk said.
The solar systems will be sold under the premium Tesla brand, and maybe we’ll see future Teslas vehicles equipped with roof solar panels (a solution similar to Toyota’s). That’s if the deal follows through, although Musk himself and his first cousin, SolarCity CEO Lyndon Rive, will recuse themselves from voting.
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