Tesla’s Musk: ‘Energy business will ultimately be as large as our vehicle business’

From pv magazine USA

Tesla reported its July-September results after markets closed on Wednesday and recorded another profitable quarter, with GAAP net income of $331 million on revenue of $8.77 billion.

It was the company’s fifth straight profitable quarter. It built a record 145,036 cars in the third quarter and delivered 139,300 electric vehicles, beating Wall Street expectations. Now analysts will be looking to see if Tesla can meet its confirmed 2020 delivery target of 500,000 vehicles.

Solar strategy

Tesla’s recent strategy of quoting low-cost solar (a claimed $1.49/watt in the United States after the tax credit) might actually be bringing in customers. After an abysmal 27 MW in the second quarter, Tesla’s total solar deployments more than doubled in the third quarter to 57 MW. The company claims that its solar roof tile deployments almost tripled.

“While not yet at scale, we recently demonstrated a ~1.5-day Solar Roof install,” the company noted in its earnings presentation. “We continue to onboard hundreds of electricians and roofers to grow this business.”

We featured a time-lapse of a five-day Tesla roof install here. We covered Tesla’s low-price strategy here.

Here are the storage and solar numbers from today’s earnings report.

Tesla’s energy storage group hit record deployments of 759 MWh in the third quarter.

“Powerwall demand remains strong and is growing, particularly as our solar business grows as many customers include a Powerwall with their solar installation,” Musk claimed.

He added that concerns with grid stability, particularly in California, are also driving the storage business. “We continue to believe that the energy business will ultimately be as large as our vehicle business,” he said.

Tesla stock was up about 3% after hours as the EV pioneer beat expectations on EPS and revenue, and reported another profitable quarter – while maintaining its 500,000 vehicle delivery target.