Tesla Confirms Plan For Home-Based Battery, Signs Wal-Mart For ‘Utility-Oriented’ Battery
We reported earlier this month that Tesla could soon unveil a home-targeted battery, and lo and behold, we'll be learning about it before the month's even over. According to an email sent to investors, the announcement will take place on April 30, and as per a Tesla spokesperson, we'll learn why Tesla's solution is so great, and why previous solutions weren't.
Tesla IR on April 30 event: "We will introduce the Tesla home battery and a very large utility scale battery."
— John Paczkowski (@JohnPaczkowski) April 21, 2015What's new information is the fact that Tesla isn't only targeting the home -- it's also targeting utilities. As Bloomberg puts it, "Tesla wants to power Wal-Mart", and apparently has already signed it up as a customer. It's also signed up Cargill, so even before its launch, Tesla is already making a serious impression about what's in store.
As we covered earlier this month, Tesla has had home-suited batteries in beta testing for about two years, and while they're not exactly cheap to implement, they'd save their customers a substantial amount of money in the long-run. What the final terms for a purchase will be might not even be revealed at the April 30 announcement. One thing we do know, though, is that Tesla will be equipping its batteries with mobile access - users will be able to monitor the charge, and perhaps even adjust some other settings (eg: prevent the storage from going below a certain threshold except for in emergencies).
Tesla Model S battery pack
It's hard to see this Tesla momentum slowing-down anytime soon - and to think, it almost got sold in 2013 to Google. I think Musk dodged a bullet there.
