The Tesla Model X, a super solar panel, silencing a room of reporters with his nuclear sun theory … what a week it’s been for Elon Musk.
As Reuters reports, Musk and his cousin and CEO of SolarCity Lyndon Rive held an event in NYC announcing the new solar panels, claiming to be the “most efficient in the industry” with a 22.04 percent module-level efficiency at turning that sunlight into usable power. Musk is chairman of SolarCity and also one of its main investors.
The new efficiency rating is seen as a groundbreaking step in solar energy being harnessed for everyday use. The standard for solar panels is usually between 14 to 20 percent, Mashable reports. Manufacturer SunPower had previously made the most efficient solar panels, at 21.5 percent.
Additionally at the event, Musk took some time to, um, refine his statement he made on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert about setting nuclear bombs off on Mars to warm it up.
As Mashable reported from that same event, Musk told the room that he wouldn’t let off the bombs on the poles, instead setting them off every few seconds just slightly above in the sky, where they would glow on like two presumably creepy-looking suns to warm up the Red Planet.
“What I was talking about was having a series of very large, by our standards, but very small by calamity standards, essentially having two tiny pulsing suns over the poles,” Musk said at the event, according to Mashable. “They’re really above the planet. Not on the planet.”
Musk’s theory, based on technology that doesn’t exist “yet,” would help warm up the atmosphere to make a greenhouse effect.
Ready for the best part?
“The room was dead silent as Musk dug into what sounded to many in the room like science fiction,” Mashable states.
“A lot of people don’t appreciate that our sun is a giant fusion explosion,” Musk then said.
All Mars talk aside, SolarCity will start making the supercharged panels in 2017 at a new factory based in Buffalo, N.Y., that will have up to “10 times” the manufacturing capacity of SolarCity’s pilot factory in Fremont, Calif., near Tesla.
Rive told reporters that by making the panels themselves, the company will “bring system costs down by 15 to 20 cents a watt,” Reuters reports.
