Elon Musk to Puerto Rico: Tesla can rebuild ruined power grid
Can Elon Musk bring power to powerless Puerto Rico?
The island is still left without any working infrastructure after taking a pummeling from Hurricane Maria, raising the question of whether the U.S. territory's antiquated power grid could use a full reboot.
Enter Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who said on Twitter Thursday that his company's team had brought power to smaller islands using solar tech, and that it could be done in Puerto Rico, too. But he noted it was up to the Puerto Rican government, public utilities, commercial stakeholders and its people.
The Tesla team has done this for many smaller islands around the world, but there is no scalability limit, so it can be done for Puerto Rico too. Such a decision would be in the hands of the PR govt, PUC, any commercial stakeholders and, most importantly, the people of PR.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 5, 2017
That drew the interest of Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello, who responded, "Let's talk. Do you want to show the world the power and scalability of your #TeslaTechnologies? PR could be that flagship project."
The two said on Twitter they would talk later Friday.
Also late Friday, Musk cited Tesla's desire to help Puerto Rico's recovery as one of several reasons to delay the unveiling of his all-electric Tesla semi truck until mid-November. The rig will be Tesla's first foray into commercial vehicles.
Tesla Semi unveil now Nov 16. Diverting resources to fix Model 3 bottlenecks & increase battery production for Puerto Rico & other affected areas.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 6, 2017
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Roger Cheng is the executive editor in charge of breaking news for CNET News. Prior to this, he was on the telecommunications beat and wrote for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal for nearly a decade. He's a devoted Trojan alum and Los Angeles Lakers fan.
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