Under the leadership of Elon Musk, Tesla made a 4D chess move that Solving The Money Problem’s Steven Mark Ryan pointed out no one seems to have noticed. This move can also be seen as a secret Trojan horse of sorts. The video (below) is inspired by some of Elon Musk’s tweets. Steven explained:
“An amazing Trojan horse strategy that’s going to see Tesla become one of the world’s largest distributors of utilities and disrupt hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars of revenue, from the energy sector over the next few decades”
The tweets that Elon shared involve the new changes that Tesla made to its solar and energy business. Starting next week, Elon said that Tesla solar panels and Tesla Solar Roofs will only be sold as integrated products with Tesla Powerwall batteries. He elaborated some more, noting that solar power will feed exclusively to the Powerwalls, which will interface only between the utility meter and the home’s main breaker panel. This enables a simple installation and seamless backup of the entire home during utility dropouts.
Powerwall 2 peak & steady power capability is better than advertised.
Now that we have lots of operational data, Tesla can unlock higher capabilities for free via software update next month.
Depending on production date, power increase power may be >50% at 30C ambient temp.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 22, 2021
Tesla’s Earlier Trojan Horse That No One Seemed To Notice
The most important of these series of tweets is one that Elon didn’t include in the thread. “Tesla Solar + Powerwall battery enables consumers to be their own utility.” Before Steven dives into this new strategy of Tesla’s, he starts by showing you a previous one so you can see a clear pattern. This previous strategy was also overlooked by investors and misunderstood by analysts. Steven explained:
“In late 2016, Tesla announced that henceforth, every Tesla vehicle produced would come equipped with a necessary sensor suite to operate as an autonomous vehicle in the future once the problem was solved. So not only would these vehicles be able to effectively turn on and become robotaxis overnight much like the Trojan horse once the software issue is solved. But preceding that, the very fact that Tesla was willing to invest the money to put the cameras and the sensors on their vehicles was the way they were able to win Full-Self Driving by getting unassailable data lead.”
Some may have been confused as to why Tesla did this back then, but Steven pointed out that this was a brilliant Trojan horse strategy. Tesla is collecting the data it needs to solve the autonomy challenge.
“Even better than that, then — five, six, seven, eight years old — press a single button and suddenly once the software is solved and they’ve already got the necessary hardware to operate autonomously, they start printing money. This is a great example of a Trojan horse strategy.”
Tesla’s 2021 Trojan Horse Strategy For Solar & Powerwall
Although the previous one is mostly related to Tesla’s auto and autonomous sector, this energy sector one is interesting as well.
“At a really high level, it just means an overall higher sale price for the energy product because they’re getting a Powerwall plus solar — that’s great. But there’s a second component to this as well. If we’re being honest here, if you have a solar product and you don’t have a home battery to store the excess energy when you’re already going above and beyond your own needs, you’re just throwing money away.”
Steven further explains what the real strategy is.
“By ensuring that every customer that has Tesla solar and is generating energy on their rooftop also has a home battery to store that energy in, Tesla is laying the groundwork for every single customer who purchases a Tesla solar product from now until the end of time to also in the future be able to participate in virtual power plants and/or energy arbitrage.”
Example: Tesla’s Flagship Virtual Power Plant In South Australia
A virtual power plant (VPP) is a network of distributed energy resources that includes homes with solar and battery systems that are working together as a single power plant. When these systems work together, small amounts of stored energy from Powerwall home batteries can increase to larger amounts to help support the electricity grid during times of need. The capacity and power of a VPP have been known to sometimes match or even exceed a traditional power station.
The Tesla VPP in South Australia was a collaboration between Tesla and the South Australian government along with electricity retailer Energy Locals. Together, they developed South Australia’s VPP, which is a network of around 50,000 solar and Tesla Powerwall home battery systems across South Australia, and formed the world’s largest VPP. Homes are able to generate and store clean, renewable energy for use anytime day or night — even during an outage. You can learn more about this project here.
Steven pointed out that even though VPPs today are still in their infancy, it’s easy to see what the future of energy looks like.
“We have centralized power plants that generate an enormous amount of energy, and in the case of a huge spike — say everyone’s getting home from work in the summer, turning on their air conditioners, etc. — peaker plants will fire up. They are extremely dirty and they pollute a lot and they’re very expensive. But when there’s a surge energy demand and you’re generating energy in real time rather than storing any battery assets, the only way you can deal with the spike in energy demand is to create more energy at that point. in time. This is extremely inefficient. Think about the future. When there are hundreds of millions of homes on planet Earth each generating energy with rooftop solar and storing that in a home battery.”
Steven then pulls up a list of the world’s largest companies by revenue and points out a common trend among them. Some of these companies include Walmart, Amazon, China National Petroleum, and Saudi Aramco, to name a few. Other than Walmart and Amazon, the top five out of the top 7 are all energy companies. If you expand the list to include the top ten, you have the addition of VW and Toyota which are automakers dependent on the fossil fuel industry. The reason why oil and gas top the list, Steven pointed out, is because of the demand for energy.
“What if instead of using fossil fuels — oil and gas – we’re instead using rooftop solar to generate the same energy needs?”
Steven also brings up the amount of revenue for each of the oil and gas companies on the list. They are in the billions. If you add them all together, you literally have multiple trillions of dollars of opportunity. As Steven phrases it: “lying in the crosshairs of Tesla.”
Tesla is a threat to the fossil fuel industry. Its growth has been so intense that analysts have been left lost in confusion and can’t see far ahead into the future. Steven noted that Tesla is making its moves silently. Elon’s not tweeting about this in your face. Sure, there are a couple of VPPs and Tesla’s underselling its Powerall and solar systems now. However, as Steven pointed out, this Trojan horse is already in the city and no one is noticing. Those who do may not understand what’s about to happen over the next few decades.
You can watch Steven’s full video here.
