It was just a matter of time but it is now certain. Tesla Motors is coming to Africa. Even though it is an American company, the Chairman and CEO is South African Elon Musk.
According to Htxt, the office will be run by Evan Rice, the current CEO of GreenCape, a sector development agency that supports businesses operating within the green economy in the Western Cape.
Rice told htxt that “Tesla will have one employee here from mid-January.” “But if we can find some solid business cases and get them going we will be expanding.”
Tesla already has distribution deals in place with several renewable energy companies in South Africa, including Dako Power and Rubicon, to sell its Powerwall product. Powerwall comes in 7KWh daily cycle or 10KWh weekly cycle models for domestic use, designed to be matched with solar panels for small scale energy storage.
While Powerwall has great potential, Rice explained, his role will be to develop the market for Tesla’s utility-scale batteries, Powerpack, which were announced earlier this year by Musk. At the launch of Powerpack, Musk said that it wasn’t necessarily aimed at supplementing renewable energy sources, but would be aimed at general grid management.
Rice says that while the initial Tesla operation will be small and relatively low key, he hopes to have bigger announcements next year.
