As You Await Tesla’s Home Battery Announcement, Here’s A Battery Presentation From Tesla CTO JB Straubel
Many are now eagerly awaiting Tesla’s home battery storage announcement scheduled for April 30. The presentation below, Tesla co-founder and CTO JB Straubel’s keynote address at the 2014 Energy Storage Symposium, is really worth a watch if you want a broader picture on Tesla’s battery storage business(es). I shared it in December, but that was right before Christmas and I figure a lot more people are interested in the topic now anyhow.
Here are a few quotes from that article that are worth highlighting right now as well:
“Most other companies do not believe that battery volume will grow as fast as it’s going to,” JB responded when questioned about a Lux Research report claiming Tesla wouldn’t bring costs down that much and the Gigafactory will sit at 50% overproduction. “They don’t understand the tight linkage between cost and volume. We’re at this crossing-point where a small reduction in cost is going to result in a ridiculously big increase in volume, because the auto industry is so big.”
JB also highlighted Tesla’s placement in the broader energy market, far beyond its place in the car market. “I see us more as an energy-innovation company,” JB said. “If we can reduce energy-storage prices, it’s the most important thing we can do to make electric vehicles more prevalent…. Add in renewable power and I have a direct line of sight towards an entire economy that doesn’t need fossil fuels and doesn’t need to pay more to do it.”
While many think this future is decades off, the fact of the matter is that the solar+storage market is already budding, and strong growth is projected in the coming few years. “The economics in many cases have already crossed a threshold where battery packs can effectively store renewables on a very big scale,” JB said. “Around 1,000 households in California already have a Tesla battery pack installed alongside photovoltaic panels leased from Solar City,” The Economist notes.
Anyhow, watch the video below, and learn more about JB Straubel and the beginning of Tesla in this article.
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