Lots of hype about Tesla’s new battery storage hits the social media pages, but the economies don’t cut it. Only massive subsidies for solar will make it work, and that will cost a lot more in power to those less able to pay:
Solar Subsidies Mean Tesla Batteries Don’t ‘Make Financial Sense’
‘It’s a luxury good — really cool to have — but I don’t see an economic argument’
Physicist Lubos Motl, too, doesn’t see any future, yet: I am not getting the Tesla battery hype
Elon Musk has done and is doing great things but I seem to be bombarded by hype – not only by media hype – that just goes beyond me.
Electric cars have been around for quite some time. In the 2010 video above, Jay Leno compares an electric Ford Focus to his Baker Electric from 1909 – when my grandfather was born. The principle remained the same – and in fact, the range remained pretty much the same, too, of order 100 miles.
Now, there have been lots of semi-groundbreaking inventions. For example, Thomas Alva Edison invented the alkaline batteries which doubled the range. We still use them often. But what is the basis for all the publicity about Musk’s battery transactions? What is the breakthrough? Where is the beef? Why does the whole world need to know whether Musk wants to build a battery plant in New Jersey or something like that? […] Read it all
Green groups, on the other hand are rejoicing, coal is stuffed, nuclear, finished. Really? They just don’t get it. These batteries can barely supply 7.5kw each! Except when there’s clouds. Great for ‘off-grid’, yet the elephant in the room is the life-cycle, then recycling when dead. One thing that is obvious, except to Greens, it can’t do base-load power.
