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I thought SolarCity's competitive advantage was solar leasing [1]. Which would mean they're sacrificing upfront profits for longer term gains and any dollar sp
by pfranz 10y ago
I thought SolarCity's competitive advantage was solar leasing [1]. Which would mean they're sacrificing upfront profits for longer term gains and any dollar spent now would very likely mean profits in the future. I haven't paid enough attention to see how well that's going.
Oh, and I've heard Tesla described as "a battery company that makes cars." Solar is also tightly coupled with battery tech since without it they're a lot less useful. Maybe that's the synergy?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity#Solar_leasing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity#Solar_leasing
- furyg3 10y agoSolar leasing is not going to be profitable, very soon. Solar panels (+ installation) is now pretty cheap and getting cheaper. Subsidies are being removed, financing is available. It's becoming a no-brainer. So they're winning there, but this creates a problem. When a significant portion of homes have solar panels, the power companies can no longer act as a free-ish battery for day/night or summer/winter. They will have to massively adjust their pricing... charging solar homes for storage, paying them a crap daily rate, and charging higher rates a night and in the winter. Regulators will be forced to let them do this because otherwise they will go bankrupt. This screws with the solar leasing model. Tesla makes big batteries that happen to have wheels on them, which gives a lot of room to innovate here. They can smooth out the day/night cycle; car/home owners can profit from the low energy price instead of be punished by it (especially if you're uber-ing out your car); used car batteries that aren't ideal for continued usage in cars (say 70% capacity or slower charge/discharge rates) are fine for power smoothing in your basement, etc.