Google or Apple partnership? Tesla Driverless or iTeslaCar?
just took a walk around the neighborhood to contemplate the tweet.
"Really exciting @TeslaMotors announcement coming on Tuesday. Am going to put my money where my mouth is in v major way."
i think the consensus opinion around the web is that there is some kind of a secondary and it will be paired with repaying the government loan.
i don't think that's going to be it, or all of it anyway. if it's just that, it just comes across like "look at me, i'm a billionaire and i got tons of cash and i'm going to pay off the government and put my money all in my company and you guys all come to see thursday how i do it." that's a bit arrogant and doesn't fit musk's profile of being generally humble. he has balls of steel (as his ex wife says), so he might do something like that, but i don't believe he would tweet about it and tease it to the public.
elon's tweet is teasing the public. and to me, that means it's got to be something that the public will look at and say "wow that's cool." something that will make the rounds on the nightly news. something that will inspire and amaze.
so my speculation is one of two things:
he's good friends with the google founders, and they have partnered in solar city too. google has driverless cars but no automotive platform. so perhaps google invests a chunk of $$$ in tesla, elon matches some portion of it, and tesla and google commit to delivering electric cars that can drive themselves. that's like a jetsons future.
the other big thing that's up there is apple. steve jobs had always wanted to do an icar. and the automotive market is big enough to be interesting for apple. so maybe... tesla and apple are getting together to develop an all electric icar? and again apple invests some big $$$ and elon matches somehow.
i think a major partner would want elon to be all-in, because he is the key to the company really. so that's it... my speculation is a major development partnership with google, or maybe apple.
as someone else mentioned i think the supercharger thing has been done already, so not that exciting.
the solarcity idea where elon buys a solarcity bond which is used to fund solar installs for model s owners, yes i could see that. but it may be a bit messy with conflicts of interest etc. and, i think the funding for the solar installations is already there as of now (afaik).
