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Tesla unveils $35K Model III

Yep. I have an 04 Avalanche that I've been driving for the past 8 years. It's been paid off for 6, and I am going to drive it until the wheels fall off it.

The best running car in the world is one that you don't owe a cent on.
 
deacfan78 said:
I have a 97 Civic I drive back and forth to work with 180k on it. Bought it new after I graduated high school and I just can't see buying anything new since it still runs good. Wife has a 08 Rav 4. Love not having a car payment!
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YOLO!
 
This could be a serious game changer.

Tesla introduces batteries for your house.

Just a battery by itself is a little bit yawn-inducing, but consider what happens if you pair this battery with a solar power system and a two-way electrical meter. The battery (and your Tesla car, perhaps) powers up at night when electricity is cheap. During the day, when you're at work anyway, the battery keeps your refrigerator going and your solar power system soaks up sun energy and sells it back to the grid when prices are high. Every household with southern exposure can be a power plant.
 
sadly, the power companies pay very little for energy produced by homeowners
 
Deacon923 said:
This could be a serious game changer.

Tesla introduces batteries for your house.

Just a battery by itself is a little bit yawn-inducing, but consider what happens if you pair this battery with a solar power system and a two-way electrical meter. The battery (and your Tesla car, perhaps) powers up at night when electricity is cheap. During the day, when you're at work anyway, the battery keeps your refrigerator going and your solar power system soaks up sun energy and sells it back to the grid when prices are high. Every household with southern exposure can be a power plant.
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This tech has been around for a long time. Waiting to hear what about Tesla's offering is a game changer. I assume smaller batteries and quicker charge rates?

"Similar products already exist on the market, but Tesla said it will explain why its batteries are better than competitors' solutions at the event. CEO Elon Musk thinks rivals' batteries "suck," according to the note from Jeff Evanson, Tesla's investor relations director."
 
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ImTheCaptain said:
sadly, the power companies pay very little for energy produced by homeowners
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They are utilities with a legal monopoly heavily regulated by the government. Thus that problem is easily fixed, at least in states where the governor is not a former Duke Energy employee.
 
Deacon923 said:
They are utilities with a legal monopoly heavily regulated by the government. Thus that problem is easily fixed, at least in states where the governor is not a former Duke Energy employee.
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let's check in with 2&2 before jumping to conclusions
 
Deacon923 said:
They are utilities with a legal monopoly heavily regulated by the government. Thus that problem is easily fixed, at least in states where the governor is not a former Duke Energy employee.
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power companies have an incredibly strong lobby in state governments. it sucks that gigantic lobbies securing payouts for old energy are holding us back from being more aggressive about new energy technologies.
 
Deacon923 said:
I assume it has something to with this:
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Yeah, so Tesla may have a smaller battery that charges quicker. Those are potentially great incremental improvements, but I'm not sure they are game changers. I don't know anyone sitting on the fence for a home battery setup over space considerations. Hopefully it's something else all together.
 
here's some more info, I guess we'll get all the details April 30.

http://learnbonds.com/tesla-motors-inc-home-battery-what-the-analysts-think/117674/

Trip Chowdhry, Global Equities Research: An analyst who has been talking about the Tesla Motors home battery kit for quite a while, Chowdhry expects the unit to cost around $13,000 but says it will be available on credit over ten years. According to the analyst, one tester he talked to paid $1,500 up front and was paying $15 per month for ten years. He was getting $10-$12 in income from energy fed into the grid by the battery.
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So basically the battery costs you $5-$10 a month in cash flow. The question is how much are you saving in electrical bills by buying your electricity at night instead of during the day, and also how much your utility gives you in incentives for installing such a system, as well as what performance or pricing advantages the Tesla set up gives you vs their competitors. I don't think Musk would bother with it if he didn't think it would move the needle significantly.

ETA: the game changing piece may be the utility-grade megabattery, not the home version. Utility-grade solar generation needs that storage badly to effectively compete on all fronts with fossil fuels.
 
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RacerDeac said:
Yeah, so Tesla may have a smaller battery that charges quicker. Those are potentially great incremental improvements, but I'm not sure they are game changers. I don't know anyone sitting on the fence for a home battery setup over space considerations. Hopefully it's something else all together.
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This is similar to the argument that "we can already compress music pretty well, so I don't see how the mp3 format is a game changer. It's just more compressed and sounds better than current technology."

Not saying this solution will be the game changer being advertised, but a rapid advancement in battery technology is absolutely a potential tipping point for large scale smart grid acceptance.
 
DCDeac said:
Not saying this solution will be the game changer being advertised, but a rapid advancement in battery technology is absolutely a potential tipping point for large scale smart grid acceptance.
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I think it's a rapid decline in battery prices rather than a rapid advancement in battery technology that will be a tipping point. As of now, this is still "leading edge" and it doesn't sound like the price will make sense for mass adaptation. At that price, the breakeven is way out in the future, if at all, and likely well after you'd need to replace the batteries. Until it's priced to be a major money saver rather than just a more advanced emergency power backup option, it won't be a game changer. I'm not sure the MP3 comparison holds up...people were already consuming music, MP3 made it better. Were there masses of people sitting on the fence, not consuming music, until MP3 came along and made it possible/worthwhile for them to do so?

Deacon923 said:
So basically the battery costs you $5-$10 a month in cash flow. The question is how much are you saving in electrical bills by buying your electricity at night instead of during the day
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I read the link as if he was selling back all of the "cheap" power he stored overnight at daily rates to make 10-12 in income, so he's netting out a loss every month, not to mention his upfront costs.

Deacon923 said:
ETA: the game changing piece may be the utility-grade megabattery, not the home version. Utility-grade solar generation needs that storage badly to effectively compete on all fronts with fossil fuels.
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Not only that, but it would help with grid balancing even using "old" power production technologies. This, to me, has way more potential to be a game changer in the near future than the home battery.
 
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One of the issues with the current grid and such technology is that the current grid is designed for a few large production plants and millions of consumers, with pretty much one way electricity flow on the grid. All the new microproduction technologies are difficult for the grid because they add electricity to the grid from places it isn't designed to have input.
 
Deaconblue said:
One of the issues with the current grid and such technology is that the current grid is designed for a few large production plants and millions of consumers, with pretty much one way electricity flow on the grid. All the new microproduction technologies are difficult for the grid because they add electricity to the grid from places it isn't designed to have input.
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what's the risk, though, to not adapting and every consumer becoming a producer?
 
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