Tesla seeks $1.5 billion bond offering while shifting its solar strategy

The EV, battery and solar company continues to raise record amounts of cash as it ramps Model 3 production. At the same time, Tesla is emphasizing profitability from its solar business, which has undergone a significant transformation since the company bought SolarCity.

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Image: Ted Eytan/Flickr

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There isn’t much of SolarCity left these days. Brothers Lyndon and Peter Rive, who founded the company, are leaving this summer, and a number of other top SolarCity executives are already gone. The door-to-door sales which helped build SolarCity to the nation’s largest distributed solar company is now gone, replaced by sales through Tesla’s retail outlets and online business.

The company is also moving away from the third-party solar model which it pioneered to a higher portion of direct sales, while scaling back its ambition for growth. Even the SolarCity brand will soon disappear.

Such changes point to SolarCity’s new role as only one star in the constellation of Elon Musk’s clean energy and transportation businesses under Tesla. The electric vehicle (EV), battery and now solar company has been focused on the roll-out of its mass-market Model 3, with the first cars rolling off the assembly lines into the waiting arms of customers in late July.

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