Imagine living in a city powered by clean energy all around — with houses and buildings all having solar roofs. And if those roofs cannot provide enough power, the rest of the electricity needs will be supplied by some other clean source of power like solar farms, wind farms, geothermal plants or maybe hydropower plants. If energy needs to be stored, there will be available battery storage packs, of course, so the city will never have to experience power outages.
As for going from one place another, residents will be required to drive electric cars so the air can be kept clean too. It won’t make sense to have clean power for homes and buildings when the air can easily be polluted by gas-fueled cars, right?
That’s just an overview of what it might be like to live in Elon Musk’s version of a cleantech city. It’s been reported that he intends to build just one for a start. But if everything goes well, there’s no reason to think he won’t build more.
Aside from solar roofs (by SolarCity), Powerpacks and Powerwalls (by Tesla), and electric vehicles (some by Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), and maybe some from other electric car makers), what else can one expect from a Tesla city?
Remember how Musk has started digging a tunnel under Hawthorne, Los Angeles (the home of SpaceX) as a potential solution to ease up traffic? Well, a Tesla City will likely suffer from less traffic as it will have subways and electric mini-buses so people won’t have to bring their own vehicles all the time because there’s reliable public transportation. And because it’s a clean city, it will be made ‘walkable and bikable’, with land use (whether residential, commercial or government) being made to follow certain aesthetic guidelines to maintain the city’s ‘clean look’.
Industrial hubs will supposedly need to figure out feasible solutions for many of society’s critical problems and challenges. Although, the details on how this will be conducted have yet to be discussed and finalized.
When it comes to deliveries, traditional shippers such as FedEx and UPS can only deliver packages to designated central shipping hubs. From there, robots (and maybe drones?) will take over. The use of robots will serve a double purpose — to save on cost, as well as provide Tesla and SpaceX with a medium they can use for developing and testing better software and hardware.
As reported by Clean Technica, the first Tesla City will be built somewhere around Cambridge, England in honor of Douglas Noel Adams who wrote The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Apart from Elon Musk, several notable personalities have allegedly signed up to reserve a slot in the first #TeslaCity — the cost of which is $47,000 — and it doesn’t come without incentives. Reserving early will mean priority delivery of Tesla Model Y or Tesla X-up if one chooses to order one. It will also mean a chance to win a Tesla Powerwall 3 or a solar roof.
Talk about living clean, green and definitely in style. That’s what’s in store for would-be Tesla City residents.
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