"Automobile companies" and "technology companies" will be the answer that many people will blurt out. Tesla's automobile products are squandered around the world and are regarded as "catfish" in general, but few people will focus on Tesla's energy products.
In fact, energy products have been written in Tesla's route planning. In August 2006, Musk 's "Secret Car Plan" mentioned the Tesla route that is now widely known: it will make a small but expensive car to attract high-end users, and use the money to sell cars to develop lower prices. Of medium-sized cars are sold, and capital is returned to make affordable mass cars.
Musk also wrote eloquently that Tesla 's primary goal is to "accelerate the transition from a hydrocarbon economy to a solar and electricity economy."
Unlike the route taken by electric cars, Tesla's solar road began with acquisitions. "Tesla will sell other sustainable energy products together with other companies," Musk wrote in the plan, enough to prove that Tesla's vision for solar products is not 100% self-developed, and it is very likely that Tesla It will also be a third party that undertakes brand sales.
This idea is being subverted. After a lapse of 14 years, Tesla's detours on solar photovoltaics and the layout of energy storage products are far more than we thought.
Save the Musk family wealth
For solar photovoltaics, Musk seems too paranoid. In 2016, Musk stood at the opposite of all shareholders and insisted on acquiring Solarcity, a home photovoltaic power generation company, for US $ 2.6 billion.
At that time, Tesla's highlight moment, Model S / X has been verified by the market, Tesla announced the release of Model 3, the current star product, and ushered in the third quarter of the year. The first quarterly profit. The enthusiastic shareholders are not willing to take over the hot potato of Solarcity.
The Musk called "a transaction without thinking", which caused Tesla's stock price to drop by 10% on the day of completion of the acquisition.
What moved Musk was that from 2013 to 2015, taking advantage of the policy, Solarcity has grown into the largest solar photovoltaic roof company in the United States. In order to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, California launched the Self-Generation Incentive Program (SGIP) a long time ago to encourage more users to deploy power generation facilities by subsidizing electricity prices. Under the government subsidy, the usage cost of Solarcity roof is 1/4 lower than the price of the public power grid, which has harvested the first wave of customers who received photovoltaics.
The controversy of people standing on the opposite side of Musk is whether Solarcity's business model can continue: rent solar panels, implement the first free installation for users, and users pay solarcity long-term electricity charges. The payment is very slow. In order to solve the problem of cash flow, Solarcity converted the lease contract into securities. However, due to the interest rate and interest rate increase, the company's bond value has been declining.
At the same time, power generation subsidies are both temptation and poison. Too much reliance on government subsidies to stimulate demand. In Solarcity's leasing model, in order to earn a difference in electricity bills, more installations are required, but it also amplifies upfront expenses.
Before being acquired, Solarcity was actually insolvent. In 2016, the loss reached 820 million US dollars, carrying a cash flow of 2.6 billion US dollars, and the installation volume continued to decline. Based on the expectations of shareholders.
Musk's vision after the acquisition of solarciy is also a win-win situation: Tesla will transfer solar panels to store sales, reduce its own cost of sales, and stop the difficult leasing model; Solarcity can also help Tesla fill upstream To solve the charging problem in the early stage of the popularization of electric vehicles.
This "sorrow" is not understood by most people, and after so many years, the linkage of the two businesses is rarely shown to the public.
More people will be willing to interpret it as a rescue operation for the Musk family.
The clue is that at the end of 2015, Solarcity's market value had shrunk by about 60%, and Musk had held Solarcity's US $ 100 million bonds and 22 million shares as early as 2014, and became a major shareholder of the company.
In addition, in addition to Musk's brother, Kimbal Musk, several members of Tesla's board of directors cross-share Solarcity and Space X. The founder of Solarcity is not an outsider. It is Musk's watch. Brothers Lyndon Rive and Peter Rive-If Solarciy is allowed to go bankrupt, Musk and his family are undoubtedly the biggest "victims".
Another focus around the outside and Tesla's board of directors is whether the valuation at the time of Solarcity's acquisition is too high. This is one of the largest single acquisitions since Tesla was established so many years ago, which is equivalent to Musk buying most of his own assets at a high price with the hard work of everyone. The lawsuit triggered by the financial rescue wrapped in the acquisition of sugar coatings has not ended yet.
Another way to go, Musk will honor
Solarcity's spring did not appear after being taken over by Tesla.
Musk's idea of integrating Solarcity business five years ago is not being fulfilled as expected-in Tesla's expanding charging pile system, in addition to a small part of the energy source is from photovoltaic power, more is directly powered by the urban power grid.
After the acquisition of Solarcity, Tesla soon released a solar roof of its own. The photovoltaic power generation device is placed in the roof tiles. When the user lays the roof of the house, it is equivalent to laying a Rows of photovoltaics.
In 2018, Tesla also cut off several solar installation centers and withdrew its agreement to sell solar panels with Home Depot, the largest building materials manufacturer in the United States, which means that Tesla has actually indirectly abandoned Solarcity's once the industry's first position. ——Cooperating with roof builders is the most direct way for every rooftop solar manufacturer to promote its business and sell products. The top three in the industry, "Sunrun" and "Vivint Solar", have adopted this cooperation.
According to Renewables data, Tesla's residential solar installation market share has dropped from 33.5% during the peak period in 2015 to 9.1% in 2019. Today, Solarcity still drags down Tesla's finances.
The market share trend of Tesla solar roof, Sunrun and Vivint Solar, the top three PV companies in the United States
Tesla is working hard to revitalize its solar roof business.
After cutting off all third-party cooperation, Tesla was forced to "self-reliance" and vertically integrated solar roof sales in car-operated stores. Last year, it also resumed the original overthrowing solar rental service, and users only needed $ 50 per month. You can install a solar panel system on the roof.
Unlike before, with the sales of Tesla vehicles, Tesla's cash reserves have been driven, and financial parties have been introduced. The leasing model can also have solid cash support.
Tesla did not hesitate to rare price reductions to recover photovoltaic customers, allowing customers to participate in product quotations, and finally finalized the price of 2 dollars / watt. This price has fallen by 20% compared to the previous price, which is 40% lower than the national average price of residential solar systems ($ 2.85 / watt).
A fire pressed the deceleration button of Tesla Solar roof in the United States.
In June 2018, Walmart, a supermarket chain, publicly sued Tesla for choking to remove the solar roof installed in 240 stores because it found that a fire broke out even after the roof was disconnected from the system. Wal-Mart listed several of Tesla's crimes: the electrical and solar systems were not properly connected, the product had obvious technical defects, there were no regular maintenance personnel, and lack of professional knowledge.
Subsequently, Amazon, another important Tesla partner, also stated its position, saying that no more Tesla solar systems will be installed.
All the safety issues are red lines. The voices of the two major business giants have pushed Tesla's solar roof business into an impasse. At present, many insiders predict that this business will be divested by Tesla again.
At least Musk would n't think so. He slapped his head and announced on Twitter: Go to Europe and China.
Tesla China disclosed in early March of this year that it was already recruiting for the development of solar rooftops in China. A person familiar with the matter told 36 krypton, "solar roof has already contacted two listed companies in the photovoltaic industry in China and will purchase domestic components."
However, this time when entering China, Tesla's photovoltaic business is far less fortunate than its electric vehicles in China. The domestic photovoltaic market is not completely blank. The penetration rate in third- and fourth-tier cities is very high, and the cost has been able to be extremely low. .
According to his prediction, Tesla may next mainly target high-end users with villas and roofs, supplemented by small industrial and commercial enterprises, and rural users are not Tesla's target users.
For wealthy high-end users, energy conversion rate and installation time are the key factors that affect the choice.
"Recently the domestic photovoltaic market has fully recovered, and Tesla's pricing will definitely be higher than domestic competitors." He has reservations about whether Tesla's photovoltaic business can be well implemented in China. He believes that "special Sela 's marketing and brand are very powerful. It may be bundled with electric vehicles. The profit of photovoltaics is not high. Tesla 's photovoltaic brand premium must reach at least 10%, otherwise it is difficult to make profits. Hard to say."
Another bargaining chip: Tesla Power Bank
The prospect of solar photovoltaic roofs is not yet clear, and Tesla has actually dropped a few early on the energy board.
What is the biggest problem of solar energy? Musk's answer is-"The sun does not come out at night." (The obvious problem with solar power is the sun does n't shine at night.)
In April 2015, Tesla has released a series of plans for solar energy storage products, including Powerwall's household battery energy products, which can be charged when the demand for electricity is low, and when the price and demand for electricity are high Output electric energy, the maximum stored energy is 10 kilowatts, which is equivalent to the electricity of an ordinary family working continuously for 10 hours.
In addition to home use, Musk 's ambition is to expand the PowerPack and advanced Megapack for commercial and public energy storage products. The idea is very simple. Multiple Powerwall components are connected in series, and the basic power can reach 100 Times (10,000 kW) or even higher.
Musk once boasted that "only 160 million Powerpacks can cover electricity in the entire United States" and "the super energy storage equipment formed by multiple Megapacks in series is enough to provide 6 hours of electricity for every family in San Francisco."
Solar capacity + energy storage + electric vehicles as power terminals, Tesla's layout is also an energy closed loop. But at present, it seems that the priority of energy storage products will be higher than solar roof.
Compared with solar roof's price cuts, the price of entry-level Powerwall has been rising. Although it has risen from $ 5,900 to $ 6,700 in recent years, it cannot stop Tesla from setting a new record of 415Mwh energy storage deployed in Q2 in 2019.
Moreover, energy storage can resonate better with Tesla's car making than capacity: Powerwall also uses a thermal control system, battery pack and architecture similar to the Tesla Model S. In addition, with the increase of electric vehicles and the growth of service life, the recycling of electric car batteries in the future is also a problem that many car companies are now tackling. The idea of using the batteries of scrapped vehicles in Tesla's energy storage products is very reasonable. Nissan and BMW have done this before.
Of course, with the habit of making the best use of Musk, he is also increasing the coordination of the automotive business and the photovoltaic business. In addition to installing solar roofs in several super factories, Tesla 's first electric pickup, Cyberrtuck, was launched last year. For the first time, the car is equipped with solar panels.
Although car companies do not start with solar panels in cars, Toyota Prius and Hyundai Sotana Hybrid are equipped with solar panels that charge the hybrid system and the top cover. These solar panels are at best icing on the cake. Solve the energy problems of vehicle components.
Tesla previously said that the optional Solar Panel has increased the endurance of Cyberruck, which will also make it the first mass-produced solar car. According to official data, as of April, orders for this car have exceeded 600,000.
Whether it is an SUV, a sedan, or a smaller and more subdivided pickup truck, Tesla's electric vehicle growth trend is no doubt, so what is the next potential growth point?
Perhaps it is energy. The silence of the past decade is due to the difficult climb in Tesla 's production capacity. All forces are concession to the main channel of the automotive business. By the beginning of 2018-2019, in order to support the capacity growth of Model 3, Tesla still needs Reduced energy storage package products and roof production. However, after a short time, Musk jumped out and shouted, "2019 is the year of solar roof and Powerwall."
Since last year, there have been more and more actions on these two product routes: in 2019, we cooperated with Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG & E), one of the largest power companies in the United States, to deploy several Megapacks in California; an advanced version was launched Solar roof V3 has improved greatly in terms of installation efficiency, cost and capacity efficiency. In March 2020, Tesla said that it will build 224 Megapacks on the island of Hawaii. After landing in 2022, it will be the latest giant in the world. Battery system ...
Tesla's blueprint for those rich fans is like this. Install a Solarcity solar roof that can convert solar energy into electrical energy on the villa, store the electrical energy in the home battery Powerwall, and charge your own Tesla electric car. Is the car running out of electricity? Not afraid, the solar panel on the car can help the car to recharge at any time. Power failure during peak hours? Not afraid, the owners of their own "microgrid" for electric cars and batteries can also sell electricity back to the public grid.
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