Tesla Opens First Charging Station in China With Energy Storage Facilities

Tesla said on Wednesday it has opened its first charging station in China with its own solar and energy storage facilities.

The charging station in Lhasa city will generate power from sunlight and store it in the energy storage facilities for electric vehicles to charge, the company said in a Weibo post.

Tesla moved into the solar business in 2016 with its $2.6-billion (roughly Rs. 19,340 crores) purchase of California-based SolarCity, and has said it is keen to develop its energy business.

The company's solar services include Solar Roof, a power generating system meant to look like normal roof tiles, and Powerwall, which can store power generated by solar panels.

Last year, Tesla, that is making electric vehicles in Shanghai, put out job advertisments for solar and energy storage project managers in China.

On June 22, Tesla CEO Elon Musk tweeted that he is considering to hold an AI Day in about a month, where the Silicon Valley billionaire will showcase the progress in AI software and hardware with an aim to recruit.

“Looking at holding Tesla AI Day in about a month or so. Will go over progress with Tesla AI software & hardware, both training & inference. Purpose is recruiting," Musk tweeted.

His latest plan to promote Tesla's technology comes amid the hiccups faced in the company's path to achieve full self-driving technology.

Musk had during an earnings call in January said he was "highly confident the car will be able to drive itself with reliability in excess of human this year."

But in May, Tesla informed the California Department of Motor Vehicles that it may not achieve full self-driving technology by 2021 end.

The automaker is under review by the California regulator, which is probing if the company violated regulations by falsely promoting its advanced driver-assistance systems as being "full self-driving."

Tesla's driver assistant features, which it describes as "autopilot" or "full self-driving," are designed to make hands-on driving easier. Those features do not make the vehicle autonomous.

© Thomson Reuters 2021