Imagine if Elon Musk lives in Nigeria. According to Texas Monthly, Tesla is starting a new subsidiary called Tesla Energy Ventures to sell power drawn from a working grid or pulled from Tesla customers’ home batteries whenever the grid malfunctions. A few months ago, the Texas power grid system malfunctioned; innovators like Elon Musk are seeing opportunities to fix the hole and capture value.
The implication is that some citizens will make money by selling their excess power to the grid. These customers use solar to power their homes; Tesla provides the technologies and products.
Besides, the company is ramping up massive utility-scale batteries as it continues to transform SolarCity which it absorbed many months ago. Many expect Tesla to become one of the leading quasi electricity utilities in coming years, considering its capabilities on battery technologies.
Tekedia Mini-MBA edition 16 (Feb 10 – May 3, 2025) opens registrations; register today for early bird discounts.
Tekedia AI in Business Masterclass opens registrations here.
Join Tekedia Capital Syndicate and invest in Africa’s finest startups here.
Tesla, which markets itself as a premium brand, isn’t expected to be among the bargain-basement retailers fighting to sign up customers by running interstate billboards offering free power on nights and weekends. Tesla could sell kilowatts that are either drawn from the grid—when it is working—or pulled from Tesla-made home batteries when the grid goes down. Importantly, Tesla could also let individual Texans with solar panels earn money by sharing their excess power with the grid. That’s something that, today, only large commercial customers can do easily.
[…]
People aware of Tesla’s strategy tell me the company had hoped to enter the state’s deregulated power market earlier. Then came the widespread blackouts due to February’s winter storms, which ripped through the power markets like an EF5 tornado, leaving over a hundred dead and the state on the hook for more than $10 billion in costs that providers such as Brazos Electric Power Cooperative couldn’t pay.
This is part of the reason why valuing this company as a car company misses the point.
---
Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA (Feb 10 - May 3, 2025), and join Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe and our global faculty; click here.
We can only watch in bewilderment.
If Amazon is not valued as a retailer, then Tesla cannot be valued as a car company; it’s that simple.