Christopher Mims, writing at the Wall Street Journal about cousins Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, and Lyndon Rive, CEO of SolarCity:
Mr. Musk’s Tesla makes cars, but it also—in the not too distant future—will make batteries. Lots of them. Tesla is building a $5 billion “gigafactory” in Nevada for batteries. A factory so large that it will, says Mr. Musk, be larger than the whole of Earth’s current capacity for manufacturing lithium-ion batteries. Most such batteries currently go into phones, tablets, laptops and other mobile devices.
At the conference Wednesday, Mr. Musk disclosed that a portion of the gigafactory’s capacity will be set aside for building “grid-scale storage.”
In other words, Tesla is going to continue its tradition of manufacturing battery packs for SolarCity, only on a much grander scale.