Tesla Solar Roof: Elon Musk Reveals Version 3 Production Will Speed Up Soon
Rick Fernandez
Chairman US Innovation Management Systems TAG, President 20-20 Innovation, Director Innovation Management Systems Professionals, President Advent Group, Inc., IMS Lead Auditor, Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt, PE, CPM
Talking about Innovation – Tesla is one of the most Innovative companies in today’s marketplace. Why do we say that they are innovative? Simply Tesla has been developing new technology into an integrated strategic master plan that will allow it not just to become the leading automotive manufacturer in a few years, but more importantly it is bringing huge value to its customers.
Tesla’s strategic vision isn’t just as a car company though, it is more of a sustainable energy provider that will ultimately allow their customers to generate, store, and use electricity in a self-sufficient manner. The three main product areas are Solar Panels for the generation of power, batteries for the storage of power for both the electric cars as well as for homes and lastly what we know them for the most which are the Tesla automobiles.
For the solar power generation, they purchased Solar City in order to integrate them into the strategic plan via Open Innovation. Next, they have created some huge joint ventures with the likes of Panasonic of Japan for the research, development, and manufacturing of battery technology. These are referred to as Gigafactories due to their size. They have one in the US and one is scheduled to be built in China. These will supply their burgeoning auto sales as well as the less known home battery systems that will supplement their solar power generation at homes and businesses. In support of the solar power, Tesla has developed a third version of its solar energy-harvesting roof tiles, CEO Elon Musk revealed at an event Monday. The company’s clean energy product has made big headlines since limited installations first started over a year ago, and Musk’s latest comments suggest Tesla will start shipping tweaked versions of these tiles to more customers.
“We’re now on version three of the solar tile roof, and we expect to spool up production of the solar tile roof significantly later this year,” Musk said at the Autonomy Investor Day hosted at its headquarters in Palo Alto, California. “I have it on my house and it’s great.”
All of this leads to an integrated sustainable electric power environment, all vertically implemented within their own internal supply chain. If they can pull this off, they could eventually become the leading energy company in the world.