Tesla founder Elon Musk doesn’t make bets that lightly, apparently. The iconic earth-shaper is now committed to solving South Australia’s ongoing power crisis in 100 days with his company’s batteries providing 100 – 300 MWh of backup power, or will not charge for the service.
Piqued by a comment made by a Tesla executive staff member to the Australian Financial Review, Australian billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes asked Musk about it on Twitter. Musk’s response: “Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?”
Lyndon & @elonmusk – how serious are you about this bet? If I can make the $ happen (& politics), can you guarantee the 100MW in 100 days? https://t.co/av38xcizNo
— Mike Cannon-Brookes (@mcannonbrookes) March 9, 2017
The Tesla executive in question is none other than Tesla’s VP for Energy Products, Lyndon Rive, the head of Tesla’s battery division. Rive claimed that all he needed was a 100-day contract to prevent the blackouts in South Australia, which has a population of 1.7 million primarily concentrated (77 percent) in the Greater Adelaide metropolitan area.
Apparently, Elon Musk is 100 percent behind Rive on this, which is what Cannon-Brookes challenged in the tweet above. Musk, in fact, went a step ahead and said that Tesla would not charge for the service if it was not installed and working within 100 days of contract signing.
On his part, Cannon-Brooks offered to arrange for the investment, as well as put the deal through the required political hoops.
Mike Cannon-Brooks is an Australian technology billionaire who co-founded Atlassian, a collaboration suite that offers applications like Jira and Confluence.
Will Cannon-Brooks be able to move things quickly and get the contract signed by Tesla? Can Tesla really set up and deploy a 300 MWh power backup system in 100 days?
In any case, Lyndon Rive and Elon Musk may yet pull off one of the most effective marketing tactics in the book, which bears a striking resemblance to “your pizza delivered in 30 minutes, or it’s free.”
Thanks for reading our work! Please bookmark 1redDrop.com to keep tabs on the hottest, most happening tech and business news from around the world. On Apple News, please favorite the 1redDrop channel to get us in your news feed.
