The Miracle of SolarCity

[Agschmid]

Elon Musk’s Tesla and SpaceX are impressive. But the solar company he founded with his cousins could be transformational.



There’s a huge, ongoing, and justifiable obsession with Elon Musk and his ventures—chiefly Tesla, the electric car manufacturer, and SpaceX, his private spacecraft business. It’s not surprising a biography of the man was a best-seller this year. But to my mind, the most important and interesting venture that the polymathic South African immigrant helped start is the one that gets the least press. That’s SolarCity, a company that aims to paper America’s rooftops with solar panels.

SolarCity has perfected a combination
of functions and disciplines that
could make mass adoption of
the solar panel possible.

Musk’s work with Tesla may inspire the most obvious comparisons to Henry Ford. But SolarCity—where Musk is the chairman, and whose concept he suggested to two of his cousins, Lyndon Rive (now the chief executive officer) and Peter Rive (Lyndon’s brother, now chief technology officer)—might offer some even more apt parallels to Ford’s career.

When it comes to forging new industries, coming up with a new technology is only the beginning. As I’ve noted before in this column, innovation in business models and processes can be as important as the initial Eureka moment. Henry Ford didn’t invent the internal combustion engine. But he did put together and perfect a combination of processes, methods, and tools—the superefficient assembly line, vertically integrated manufacturing, enormous scale, bold human resources policies like the $5 day, and cutting-edge financing techniques—that transformed the car from an expensive toy for the rich into a utilitarian vehicle for the middle class.

Now, Tesla has pioneered a new mode of selling cars—direct to the consumer instead of through dealerships. And it is attempting to integrate vertically by constructing its own massive battery factory. But at its root the company is selling a small number of very expensive sports cars to very rich people. Tesla is essentially where Ford Motor Co. was in 1903, before the Model T.

Source.

[kiva]

1. Love to use Solar City.

Unfortunately they do not put panels up on residences with flat roofs.

[Agschmid]

2. They are big here in Mass.

I didn't know about the flat roof thing, that stinks!

[kiva]

3. My brother uses them in Colorado

and I was ready when they moved to Nevada. After a series of aborted appointments, they told me about the flat roofs issue...I was disappointed.

[Agschmid]

4. What is the actual issue with flat roofs?

Amazon distribution centers have them?

[kiva]

5. My understanding is that attaching the frames

that keep the panels at an angle sometimes resulted in leaks in a roof. The company reps did not say this, but reading the various comments on their and other sites seems to support this idea.

Interestingly they do seem to still do flat-roofed businesses, so I'm hopeful that they will change their policy.