Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s multibillion-dollar acquisition of his cousins’ sustainable-energy company, solarcity, is totally logical—and hugely risky. Will Musk pull off another miracle?
Elon Musk stands in the middle of a residential street. It's shortly before sunset at a joint tesla- solarcity product launch, held last October at Universal Studios 'back lot in Los Angeles, and Musk, wearing a gray sweater and black jeans, is preched on a platform erected in the center of the manicured suburba that served as the set for desperate housewives. Musk begins his presentation with doom and gloom- rising co2 levels, the crisis of global warming- bust the audience of 200 or so is beaming.
They’re excited to see what fantastical invention he will unveil as a solution. As he stresses the need to transition the world to sustainable energy, an overzealous attendee yells out, “Save us, Elon!”
Musk’s big reveal: “The houses you see around you are all solar houses. Did you notice?” he says, gesturing toward the homes with a grin. They appear to have regular shingled rooftops, but Musk says they’ve actually been retrofitted with a new product called the Solar Roof, a potentially transformative system that’s nearly indistinguishable from a traditional rooftop—and one, he promises, that lasts longer and costs less, all while generating electricity. “Why would you buy anything else?” he says. The crowd cheers.
This story is from the July/August 2017 edition of Fast Company.
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This story is from the July/August 2017 edition of Fast Company.
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