Elon Musk appears to be opening a new front in the European battle for electric car supremacy: the power behind the wheel.
has recently acquired a licence that will enable the carmaker to trade electricity across western Europe and the company has also been surveying customers in Germany about potentially using Tesla electricity in their cars.
Such moves, consultants and energy industry executives say, could set the stage for the company - possibly with one or more partners - to take on established utilities in Germany, Europe’s biggest power market and autos heartland.
Tesla declined to comment about its energy market plans.
Generating and trading power could help Tesla lower the running costs of its cars at a time rival automakers, including Germany’s BMW (BMWG.DE), Audi (NSUG.DE), Porsche [PSCH.UL] and Mercedes (DAIGn.DE), are churning out new electric models.
It could also step up competition to utilities such as Vattenfall [VATN.UL] and EnBW (EBKG.DE), which are investing in electric mobility services too, but which like peers RWE (RWEG.DE) and E.ON (EONGn.DE) are lumbered with the cost of winding down fossil fuel and nuclear power plants.
Tesla already sells solar panels and the Powerwall battery storage system for homes, but now appears to be looking at selling electricity directly to customers and using the home storage systems to provide services to the grid.....MUCH MORE
In June, the company became a member of the Paris-based EPEX Spot power exchange, a platform used to trade much of western Europe’s intraday cross-border electricity.
A month later, it surveyed German customers about their interest in energy services.
“What would encourage you to switch from your existing energy supplier?”, the survey said, according to a copy seen by Reuters....
As we noted last year, Elon has to be careful with the differences in business culture as he makes his move in Germany.
He's gotten off on the right foot with Volkswagen and it is always good to have the industrial behemoths at least neutral if not on your side. That will also go a long way toward making nice with the banking establishment which as far as corporate boards go have a lot of power.
And that brings us to employees. He can't treat them as poorly as he does the ones in California. The unions will thwart you at every turn if you don't make nice.
Here's a post from the time Musk announced he was going to Berlin:
November 12, 2020
Musk Says Tesla's First European Production Plant Will Be In Berlin (TSLA)
This is a bit surprising for a few reasons. First off, Tesla's acquisition of German manufacturing automation specialist Grohmann Engineering, did not go smoothly, in part due to real cultural differences. Secondly, although Mr. Musk seems to like being near airports (see SpaceX - LAX tunnel) if he was looking for a big chunk of land, the old Tempelhof Airport space is still empty.
Third, although there seems to be a budding bromance between Musk and VW CEO Dr. Diess, it seems that setting up shop is quite the in-your-face challenge to the German auto industry....
