Bidirectional charging as a Tesla killer?

[Nick Gerteis]

My gripe is with Elon Musk, not Tesla per se. But so long as Musk remains in control of Tesla, Musk and Tesla are effectively synonymous. We differ about "the most important things in EV". In case you haven't heard, there are serious problems coming up with the resources for enough batteries to get EVERYONE in EVs. There are serious problems taking advantage of renewable energy sources because there isn't enough storage. In the face of all this, allowing Tesla to churn out the hundreds of thousands (millions?) of EVs without bidirectional charging, allowing it to tie up battery resources in PowerWalls which if utility company promises of reliability are to be believed (they are not) and even pretending Teslas are or will ever be 'the people's car' like VW is - I am at a loss for printable words.

As for 'over time', we have about 10 years - if it isn't already too late to avert catastrophic climate damage. Neither Musk nor the country is serious about this. Musk is selling status, not environmental consciousness. And he is abetted by a government of the rich which limits subsidies to those who have enough one-year tax liabilities to afford his expensive toys.

I understand your concern about not being able to use all future battery capacity for grid backup. That’s an obvious solution to a problem we’ll be sure to face as we increase percentage of renewables. But please consider that we’re really only now starting to roll out EVs on a large scale, and already starting to offer V2G/H. I think it’s going to be a standard feature as we get past 10-20% EVs, and even Tesla will hopefully offer it soon. They have morphed from tech leader to tech follower over the last year after all. So we’ve really only “lost” 5% of our total future vehicle pool to non V2G thinking, unfortunate but not alarming yet.

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[williams]

Tesla was teasing this years ago, the model Y has it built in but never utilized it. Thats bad on them.

 

[Amps]

Tesla was teasing this years ago, the model Y has it built in but never utilized it.

V2G/H built-in to Model Y? Please explain, thanks.

 

[GDN]

Tesla was teasing this years ago, the model Y has it built in but never utilized it. Thats bad on them.

I have not heard this either. Articles? There are good videos from Ingineerix - some of the best Tesla tear down and explanation videos there are, the first couple of year models of Model 3 don't support it for sure. Tesla would have had to re-engineer some components to make it work, I've not ever seen the internal components were added.

I'm sure they could add it easily - they have some of the best tech in the electronics. I believe that the cost to add it would never be worth it for 95% of the owners.

It would be interesting to know how many HIS systems are sold and installed this year for a Lightning. I'm guessing it will be 5% or less. I'd like to compare that to the cost for what was added inside the truck to make this work that we all pay for.

This is going to boil down to the chicken or the egg for this technology, but for $9K minimum to have the HIS installed and use the technology is a non-starter for most.

 

[sotek2345]

I have not heard this either. Articles? There are good videos from Ingineerix - some of the best Tesla tear down and explanation videos there are, the first couple of year models of Model 3 don't support it for sure. Tesla would have had to re-engineer some components to make it work, I've not ever seen the internal components were added.

I'm sure they could add it easily - they have some of the best tech in the electronics. I believe that the cost to add it would never be worth it for 95% of the owners.

It would be interesting to know how many HIS systems are sold and installed this year for a Lightning. I'm guessing it will be 5% or less. I'd like to compare that to the cost for what was added inside the truck to make this work that we all pay for.

This is going to boil down to the chicken or the egg for this technology, but for $9K minimum to have the HIS installed and use the technology is a non-starter for most.

Yeah, I was very excited about the home back up system - until the cost of the HIS came out. Would have been a much better system if Ford had exported A/C from the truck (using the onboard inverters they already have) instead of DC. I understand there are likely engineering reasons they couldn't do this, but it would have been a much cheaper (in terms of extra equipment and install costs) solution for end users.

May just do a generator plug + manual transfer switch and use the 240V outlet.

 

[pstansel]

May just do a generator plug + manual transfer switch and use the 240V outlet.

My Generac 6852 arrives tomorrow and I have my electrician quotes to get it hooked up

 

[williams]

I have not heard this either. Articles? There are good videos from Ingineerix - some of the best Tesla tear down and explanation videos there are, the first couple of year models of Model 3 don't support it for sure. Tesla would have had to re-engineer some components to make it work, I've not ever seen the internal components were added.

I'm sure they could add it easily - they have some of the best tech in the electronics. I believe that the cost to add it would never be worth it for 95% of the owners.

It would be interesting to know how many HIS systems are sold and installed this year for a Lightning. I'm guessing it will be 5% or less. I'd like to compare that to the cost for what was added inside the truck to make this work that we all pay for.

This is going to boil down to the chicken or the egg for this technology, but for $9K minimum to have the HIS installed and use the technology is a non-starter for most.

Some of the model Y components were nearly ready for it. As well he said himself the cars and trucks were going to be connected to help stabilize the grid. Even my Tesla powerwalls have a feature built in during high demand times to help feed more power to the grid when my panels are production adequate power to assist in grid fluctuations.

Internals memos theres supposed to be an entire ecosystem with the solar, power walls, and cars to make the grid obsolete. Solar charges the power walls and car and power the house. At night the power wall and car and power the house. During a storm the power walls also power the house and charge the car. If there is a complete outage locally, in full circle you can take the car to a supercharger, in one hour fully charge the car and return home and recharge the power walls and run the house for days. A model 3/y long range is nearly 6 power walls. With zero grid power or solar you could with decent rationing still using the a/c in my house in Tampa FL have 6 full days of power.

Full circle.

That all being said I already have Tesla power walls and Solar, I hope Ford can fill in the gap with backfeed into the system and it play nice. As Tesla is one of the largest home providers of solar I hope they have it figured out before September when I take delivery.

 

[GDN]

That is all good and I don't disagree, I just don't think they truly have all of the hardware being built into their cars yet. They are nimble and I'm sure in 60 days they could have it added, but just not sure it is there today.

I'll also still argue as much as I like that Tesla puts all their hardware, like camera's etc in every car, these electrical components are not not trivial and could add several hundred to each car. The uptake is still too small to offset those costs. Someday, but it isn't today.

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