Late Thursday night [30 April] in Hawthorne, California, Tesla revealed its “missing piece to building a sustainable future,” which the company says puts the world on the road to “enabling zero emissions power generation.”
Tesla notes that the world currently uses 20 trillion kWh of energy annually, which is:
“Enough energy to power a single family home for 1.8 billion years or supply energy to a nuclear power plant for 2,300 years (or launch the Falcon 9 rocket seventeen million times).”
The company says that the Tesla Energy products launched today will help to start to wean the world off fossil fuels.
The Tesla Model S And The Powerwall (Image: Tesla)
More specifically the company is offering “a suite of batteries” for residential, business and utility use. Those solutions are outlined below.
As for what was available before today, Tesla CEO Elon Musk was very candid, “The issue with existing batteries is that they suck. They are expensive, unreliable and bad in every way.”
The Tesla CEO said that the first residential units will start shipping in about three months, but that the initial ramp will be slow, as early batteries will be built at the company’s Fremont factory.
However, next year production will switch to Tesla’s Nevada Gigafactory, and things will quickly speed up.
As a special bonus, the whole presentation made from California was done off the grid, via the company’s new utility grade “Power Packs”.
Read more: Inside EVs