Elon Musk‘s Tesla is looking to enter the UK home energy market after making a formal bid to secure an electricity supply licence from Ofgem.
The Texas-headquartered company has applied for a UK approval to supply homes with power via its Manchester-based UK subsidiary Tesla Energy Ventures.
Ofgem will collect comments on the licence application until 22 August, with the final decision expected within a year.
If approved, Tesla would be free to take on the incumbent dominant energy providers such as EDF, British Gas, E.ON Next and more recent entrant Octopus Energy.
Best known for its electric vehicles, the $1tn company also owns an energy division focused on solar energy generation systems an battery energy storage.
The energy subsidiary, launched in 2015, was founded to apply the battery technology developed for Tesla vehicles to homes and was bolstered by the 2016 acquisition of SolarCity for $2.6bn.
Though the newly licensed UK energy provider would be backed by substantial resources, the controversy around Musk’s political endeavours may be a barrier for growth.
Recent sales figure revealed that sales of new Tesla cars in the UK fell by 59% year-on-year, with the company’s UK market share steadily dropping in recent years. Negative sentiment surrounding the Tesla chief executive is among one of the suggestions for the muted performance, however, competition from Chinese EV developer BYD is also a key factor.
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