If you look at tech side of things Tesla company was the most interesting one lately and 2016 for them was particular exciting with highlights like Model 3 unveil event, the introduction of Autopilot 2.0 on all cars, and finally the unveiling of the solar roof products. So according to this, the year 2016 was about planning and preparation and 2017 will be all about execution!
The main focus will be on Model 3 since the company has planned that this vehicle sales will finance their other expansions. The production is slated for second part of 2017 and volume production is supposed to be achieved by the end of the year. But before all of this happens Tesla is going to host another event where they will showcase the final design of the car as well as its interior with details regarding all the configurations and trims. This particular event should be sometime around March if comments from Tesla CEO Elon Musk are to be believed.
Tesla is also planning to make first deliveries and installations of the new Powerwall 2 in the first few months of 2017. They are already starting to produce this home battery pack in volume at the Gigafactory so that they can meet the deliveries slated for January for the US market and they are planning to move to other markets during the first quarter. The volumes of the Powerwall 2 are projected to be more significant than the predecessors because they managed to double the battery capacity while only slightly increasing overall dimensions. The company also plans to start shipping the Powerpack 2 in greater volume, but we won’t be hearing that much about it since it won’t be that much of a customer-facing process.
SolarCity will also be something that will, throughout the next year, be more and more incorporated into Tesla’s business and distribution channels. It will be phased into the company within the first half of the year, according to some reports. This will then lead to production of solar roof products, which is going to happen by merging SolarCity’s Silevo and Zep engineering teams with Tesla’s and starting work with Panasonic in order to set manufacturing at SolarCity’s Buffalo plant.
After this, the producing of solar cells, solar modules, and the solar tiles for the solar roof can commence. Summer is the time when production is expected to start, and there will be only four tile styles available at that point, with the option of updating and adding the styles in every few months.
And now for the unveils for 2017. Tesla is aiming to make the Model Y, a compact SUV built on the same platform as the Model 3, the first introduction in 2017. They still didn’t make any official time plan for the presentation, but it will be very soon based on the fact that Musk stated that any other future releases are going to happen after the unveil of Model Y. The company is also working on a minibus project that will be built on the Model X chassis, and they started a semi truck program,”Tesla Semi” which is led by the former Model S program director Jerome Guillen.
In August Musk stated that they plan to unveil both of these “within 6 to 9 months”, which translates to the first quarter of 2017. But that is not all, Tesla is also working on a pickup, but that one is going to be released sometime later, like next “couple of years,” as Musk stated. A slim chance is that the prototype version will emerge sometime in 2017, but we can only hope. Nevertheless, Tesla has a lot of planned for the upcoming year, and we will gladly follow their execution of these endeavors, and even more, happily report back to you! Stay tuned!
