Tesla CEO teases a battery to power your home, will enter production in six months

Shawn Knight

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elon musk tesla battery toyota supercharger toyota mirai home battery

Tesla is working on a brand new battery product that’s designed to supply power not to an automobile, but your home. The home battery is based on the company’s lithium-ion battery technology and could go on sale by the end of the year.

During a recent earnings call, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said his company plans to unveil a consumer battery for use in people’s homes or businesses. The design is said to be complete and Musk is really happy with the results. Production is expected to begin within the next six months, Musk concluded.

As The Verge notes, the idea isn’t entirely original although such a device could have multiple, practical uses. The Toyota Mirai, for example, uses hydrogen fuel cell technology that owners can tap into to power their homes. Toyota says a Mirai can power the typical Japanese home for a week and a frugally managed American home for up to five days.

elon musk tesla battery toyota supercharger toyota mirai home battery

But why would you want to use your car to power your home? To cut down (or potentially eliminate) your electric bill.

The great thing about Tesla’s Supercharger recharging stations is that they’re free to use. Assuming customers could somehow take their batteries to these stations and recharge them alongside their cars, one could put a serious dent in their monthly electric bill.

Such a device could also serve as a giant UPS for your home in the event of power loss during a storm or a city-wide brownout. 

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For a week? Nice! Although a japanese home consists of maybe 10m2 =P

Still, I got a big question after reading the article, tesla offers free "refills"? how do they manage to do that??
 
For a week? Nice! Although a japanese home consists of maybe 10m2 =P

Still, I got a big question after reading the article, tesla offers free "refills"? how do they manage to do that??

...the Supercharger network is a key part of Tesla’s business model. With each new Model S purchase, customers are given free recharges for life – it’s factored into the overall cost of the car.
 
Some technical details, please! max power output, capacity in kWh, U out, mono or tri-phase output?
 
Mr. Musk, please get yourself into batteries for mobiles!

P.S. I can wait for the next 6 month, bit that is it!
 
"Assuming customers could somehow take their batteries to these stations and recharge them alongside their cars "

That's completely ridiculous.
 
For a week? Nice! Although a japanese home consists of maybe 10m2 =P

Still, I got a big question after reading the article, tesla offers free "refills"? how do they manage to do that??
For a week? Nice! Although a japanese home consists of maybe 10m2 =P

Still, I got a big question after reading the article, tesla offers free "refills"? how do they manage to do that??

Their charging stations are few and far between and most Tesla owners charge up at home or work so the actual amount of power provided is very low. It's a great marketing tool though and it does allow you to travel long distances if you can stop every couple of hundred miles and wait around for a few hours.

Bjørn Nyland has probably spent the most time in a Tesla on the planet. His vids on youtube tell all.
 
What about up-front costs? How long will it take to recoup that cost? No mention of this, here. Typical of marketing departments these days.

You can greatly reduce or eliminate the cost of electricity using a well-designed solar / wind power combination with backup batteries for when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, but it may take years to recoup those costs through the "savings" that you have by not having an electric bill. Same thing with Musk's new battery.
 
What about up-front costs? How long will it take to recoup that cost? No mention of this, here. Typical of marketing departments these days.

You can greatly reduce or eliminate the cost of electricity using a well-designed solar / wind power combination with backup batteries for when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, but it may take years to recoup those costs through the "savings" that you have by not having an electric bill. Same thing with Musk's new battery.

Yep, you've hit the nail on the head! And while the Government allows China to continue to "dump" their products in the US, solar panel producers are feeling the pinch so the latest and greatest technology is slowing down. Combine this product with a high efficiency panel and, depending on where you live, you could easily get off the grid. Of course, it will be interesting to see how long before all the power producers like Duke Energy and TVA start either buying it all up or trying to enact laws against the products like TVA has done against homeowners being to sell back their excess power.
 
For a week? Nice! Although a japanese home consists of maybe 10m2 =P

Still, I got a big question after reading the article, tesla offers free "refills"? how do they manage to do that??

Solar panels... they have a company called tesla solar or something... so they have very cheap solar panel that power the charge stations
 
I still think think these articles should be titled along the lines of, "Elon Musk is so abominably full of sh!t, the whites of his eyes are turning brown".

Considering I live in a city with a population of 1.5 million, give or take, I would have to take the battery out of my house, then drive a minimum of 30+ miles to get it charged.

When did Musk develop the unrepentant delusion that Lithium-Ion batteries were invented by him?
 
Already running my home on batteries powered by solar and wind. Zero electric bill is nice.
 
This would be especially handy in South Africa where the terrific government has imposed 2 hour rolling blackouts. Basically a 2 hour blackout at your home/business ever day for 2 hours.
This would be enormously handy for safeguarding all your electrical equipment from frying due to power drops and surges.

The other beauty about living in South Africa, Tesla won't bring it's innovation this side :(
 
Im trying to figure out what problem this solves?

It wont save you money. You would need to purchase this extremely expensive car and then drive down to a recharge station. And even if you have no power at the house, its usually due to a natural disaster that would likely knock out the supply lines to the Tesla charge stations as well. So a generator is a better option due to gasoline being more available. And lets not even mention the cost to implement some sort of adapter to supply power to your homes grid.

It wont "save the planet" because the the production of all these Li-ion batteries is far from "Green". And if the power to the stations is not 100% solar then you are still using fossil fuels to supply them.

And besides that, even if you have a marginal decrease in the amount of power you use each month. The power companies implement a "base usage fee" which is basically a limit on how low your monthly bill can be if you use any power at all supplied on their lines.

I see this as just a waste of time and effort from a company trying to stay in the game until a real hydrogen network will arrive. A fuel that can use water as its base, geothermal/solar as its production, and zero carbon emissions can not be beat.
 
@cliffordcooley
I'm not sure what the initial setup costs were as it was already there when I bought the house. Only thing I have to pay, other than a mortgage, is sewer service. Everything else is "free".
 
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