Elon Musk can’t stop. Tesla can’t stop. The cleantech revolution can’t stop.
As if electric robotaxis, solar roofs, insane battery price reductions and gigafactories, reusable rockets, record-shattering acceleration, electric semi trucks and minibuses, and hyperloops + tunnel-boring companies weren’t enough, Elon Musk has decided to build entire cleantech cities. Well, he’s starting with one, but if all goes well, that could leads to hundreds more.
As you might have guessed, these #TeslaCities have several unique features.
First of all, when it comes to the buildings, they will all have solar roofs. For remaining electricity needs, electricity will come from wind farms or solar farms built in the region. In certain cases, geothermal power, hydropower, and rainbow power might be used — more on the latter another day. Some amount of battery storage (Tesla Powerpacks and Powerwalls) will be installed as well in order to always match electricity supply with electricity demand.
City residents who choose to drive will have to drive fully electric cars — though, they can choose non-Tesla models if they like. Self-driving electric minibuses (one of Tesla’s planned products), trams, and subways will be implemented for certain routes as well. Naturally, though, after living with Los Angeles traffic for longer than anyone should be forced to, Elon is intent to make these #TeslaCities walkable and bikeable, with nice urban cores that mix land uses (residential, commercial, governmental, etc.) and follow certain aesthetic guidelines (think New Urbanism Elon-ized).
Industrial hubs will need to focus on matters that help to solve critical human/societal challenges. Though, it’s unclear how the evaluation or permitting for such uses will be implemented.
For last-mile deliveries, robots will be used in order to save on costs and further test and develop hardware and software that Elon wants to use for other applications at Tesla and SpaceX. Conventional shippers such as FedEx and UPS will simply deliver their packages to central shipping hubs where #TeslaCities robots take over.
The question you probably have on your mind at this point — will #TeslaCities use hyperloops? It seems like some of them would, but we don’t have any details on that yet.
Now, Tesla is likely to have no shortage of enthusiasts eager to sign up ASAP to join one of these #TeslaCities, but that doesn’t mean Tesla’s leaving incentives off the table. Early reservation holders* will get priority delivery of the Tesla Model Y and Tesla X-up (that’s Tesla’s coming pickup truck) if they choose to reserve one. Early reservation holders will also be entered into a lottery/raffle to win a Tesla Powerwall 3 or solar roof. (*By the way, it’s $47,000 to reserve a lot in the first #TeslaCity — with no construction timeline for any part of the city published yet.)
Steve Jurvetson, Kimbal Musk, and Elon Musk, unsurprisingly, already have their reservations in. Rumor is that Akon, Jon Favreau, Stephen Colbert, Don Cheadle, Morgan Freeman, Morgan Freeman’s former driver (Robert Gaskill, founder of MOTEV), Oprah, Beyonce + Jay-Z, Jaden Smith, Matt & Roger Pressman, and Anthony Kiedis have put down reservations as well.
The location for #TeslaCity #1 is somewhere in the vicinity of Cambridge, England. That’s in honor of Douglas Noel Adams (who I just discovered had the same birthday as me), author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
If you have more info on #TeslaCities, please pass it along! (Also, please note today’s date.)
Photo by Steve Jurvetson (CC BY 2.0 license)
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