Brits oppose Tesla’s plan to sell energy in UK because Elon Musk is so distasteful

Thousands of Britons have voiced opposition to a request by Tesla to supply electricity to British homes.

And what’s the sole reason for this opposition? It’s because of Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Last month, Tesla applied for a license to supply electricity to British homes. The application was sent to Ofgem, UK’s government energy regulator.

In addition to Tesla’s business selling EVs, and its CEO’s business making promises about autonomy and robots that never materialize, Tesla is also in the business of selling energy products.

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The energy products include solar panels, after Tesla’s controversial acquisition of SolarCity, a company run by Musk’s cousin Lyndon Rive, in 2016. They also include Powerwalls, Tesla’s home battery backup system which can store energy from a home’s solar panels or from the grid, and then use it or sell it back to the grid later during peak hours when electricity is most expensive.

But even more interestingly, Powerwalls can be hooked into a network, called a Virtual Power Plant or VPP, which allows thousands of batteries to simultaneously push energy to the grid when the grid needs it. This can help to end power outages and can also make a significant amount of money for homeowners who participate.

A VPP can also help with overall grid stability. While a single battery doesn’t do much to help the entire grid, thousands of batteries all together can help to shave peaks and shift loads grid-wide, helping to enable the transition to renewable forms of energy generation like wind and solar, which can be intermittent due to weather, clouds, gusts of wind and so on.

And the UK is doing quite well at renewable adoption – the island which started the industrial revolution because it’s literally built on a bed of coal just shut down its last coal plant last year. Clean electricity growth is strong, with over half of its electricity coming from renewables sources last year.

And it has set even more ambitious goals going forward, targeting an 81% emissions cut by 2035.

So, a VPP might be useful in a country with so much wind and solar.

While Tesla’s application does not specify details of its plans (In accordance with UK law), it seems likely that the purpose behind the application would be to set up a VPP system in the UK. Tesla already runs VPPs in Texas and California.

So, all sounds good, right? This is a useful product, and it can help the UK confront a challenge it will need to face as it transitions to a cleaner grid. And, at a time when electricity prices are going up worldwide, more competition and flexibility in energy markets can only be a good thing.

The only problem? Everyone hates Elon Musk. A lot.

As it turns out, Ofgem has been swamped with thousands of comments opposing Tesla’s plan, as a result of a campaign that says Musk shouldn’t be allowed to get anywhere near UK’s electricity supply.

The campaign was launched by the group Best for Britain, which bills itself as “the researchers, data scientists, strategists, and activists, fixing the problems Britain faces after Brexit.”

It set up an action campaign allowing Brits to send a letter to Ofgem stating their opposition to Tesla’s plan.

The letter argues that Musk has proven, through his recent political activity, that he is not interested in the general wellbeing of the populace, but rather in “enriching himself”pushing his own agenda.” It accuses him of “dangerous incompetence or wilful neglect,” and says that these should be “disqualifying qualities for entrance into our energy markets.”

For background, while Musk claimed to be working to reduce US government waste (when he actually increased the deficit), he in fact spent that time advising the US to defund entities investigating his unlawful actions.

The letter also mentions the “rapid spread of misinformation, hatred and conspiracy theories in the UK and across the wider world” on twitter since Musk spent $44 billion to buy the company (that later dropped to a value closer to $15 billion – his recent purchase of it from himself notwithstanding). After Musk purchased the platform, hate speech has flourished there.

None of the points made by the letter focus on Tesla’s business as a whole, but rather solely on its CEO’s harmful actions.

As of yesterday, Best for Britain says 8,462 people had used it to contact Ofgem to voice their opposition to the plan. Public comment remains open until Friday, August 22.

Musk’s actions continue to harm Tesla’s business

This is not the first time Tesla has received local opposition for business deals due to Musk’s poor public persona. In May, Australians voiced opposition to a plan to build a battery factory and Tesla showroom, ~95% of which opposed the plan (with some choice Australian language appearing in the public comments).

And just yesterday, the Austin American-Statesman reported opposition to Tesla’s tax breaks from residents of the county where its Texas Gigafactory is located.

Separately, Musk has received pushback in the UK and elsewhere for his support for extreme rightwing and racist political figures, both in the US where he gave hundreds of millions of dollars in bribes to a treasonous felon who tried to overthrow the US government, and in the UK where he has given both rhetorical and monetary support for a violent racist fraudster who has been imprisoned multiple times.

His unambiguous Nazi salutes, agreeing with a defense of Hitler’s actions in the Holocaust, support for German neo-Nazis, and many other white supremacist statements didn’t help, either.

Beyond his association with racist politics, he has also directly spread misinformation about climate change himself, despite this being a contradiction of Tesla’s mission. Musk has even said that his own recent actions are “not good for America or the world.”

The result of these actions has been to drive protests against the company, embarrass owners and destroy Tesla’s brand reputation.

In the UK specifically, Tesla sales have fallen by 60% year-over-year, according to the most recent July numbers. Tesla sales show similar trends in most territories in which the company sells, with Tesla sales down globally despite a rising global EV market.

Nevertheless, despite Elon Musk demonstrably being the problem with Tesla right now, his friends and family on Tesla’s board recently gave him a ~$29 billion payout, claiming that it would “energize and focus” the company’s bad CEO.

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