Tesla's CTO JB Straubel said he was more interested in batteries than cars at his famed 2014 Energy Symposium keynote speech. Image: Tesla.
EV maker Tesla is looking to populate its stationary storage business, posting advertisements for more than 70 job openings on the company website.
It has long been well known that the company is looking to make stationary storage products a key part of its offering along with its involvement in the automotive market.
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At a widely quoted keynote speech at a 2014 energy storage symposium in Silicon Valley, the company’s chief technical officer JB Straubel said he saw as much, if not more, potential for scaling up production and uptake of energy storage through the stationary sector as he did in EVs. The company is currently building the famed ‘Gigafactory,’ a vast facility in Nevada which Tesla hopes will be capable of producing 500,000 battery packs a year.
Through the company’s tie-ins with US residential installer SolarCity, run by Tesla chief executive officer and founder Elon Musk’s cousins Lyndon and Pete Rive, the company already supplies lithium-ion battery packs to the solar-plus-storage sector.
The positions advertised on the Tesla site cover a broad range of areas. These include a chief counsel, who would take responsibility for legal strategy and implementation and software engineers and managers.
Tesla's CTO JB Straubel's 2014 keynote speech on batteries.
Tesla's 'Gigafactory' should have the capacity to produce 500,000 lithium-ion battery packs a year by 2020. Image: Tesla.
