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Comment by samcheng | Hacker News Reader

This is a 115-year-old company, with one of the most valuable brands in the world, a long history of technological innovation, and legendary German engineering, chasing a 15-year-old upstart with less than a tenth of the sales volume.

Even if you think Tesla is over-hyped and over-valued, you've got to hand it to them for really shaping the narrative of automotive innovation.

As for this particular device, it appears to top out at 20kWh. That's pretty small; a gasoline-replacement electric car has a much larger battery. (Tesla sells them up to 100kWh) Then again, 20kWh is enough to cover most days' driving...

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Tesla actually underhypes the Powerwall 2. It's better than most people realize. See: capabilities of the backup gateway. It islands existing grid tie solar systems and allows these systems to generate electricity for household loads and/or Powerwall charging during grid failures. Usually grid tie solar systems are disabled during grid failures to prevent them from exporting electricity to the grid.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxAbd-kanI8

Tesla mentions this capability, but most people shopping for energy storage don't realize what it would cost to do this with gear from other manufacturers (SMA for example). Some storage providers don't offer any backup capability at all. Enphase is the saddest example of this. Enphase tried to convince customers that they shouldn't demand backup capabilities from their solar energy storage systems, and Tesla is actually towing a Tiny house around Australia that uses Enphase microinverters with a Powerwall 2 offgrid. Enphase's own AC Battery provide no backup capability at all or a way to run off grid.

I sell solar power systems in New Zealand and the Powerwall 2 makes every other storage solution look stupid at the moment when considering price per warranted kW/h and features. I can't sell my customers a Powerwall 2 yet, but I advise against buying systems that I can sell them from Panasonic, LG, Sonnen, Enphase, etc. The whole storage industry needs to understand that the Powerwall 2 is real (get over the shock) and that if they don't cut their prices roughly in half---look at Aquion.

https://cleantechnica.com/2017/03/15/aquion-energy-files-cha...

Nice battery. Too expensive.

Powerwall is very expensive too. It would cost well over 10k to install 2 modules that their website says would be adequate for my house. I pay something like $100/mo for electricity. Do the math. Solar is way too expensive as well, even with subsidies.

I don't know who their target market is. Is it only for people who can't count?

My parents house loses power often when it rains. They just bought one as a house-scale UPS.

There are a lot cheaper options for a house scale UPS if they have natural gas. Fully automatic, and can run for days on end.

Interesting. Link?

They’ve already bought it so...

Know there are a number of state/fed discounts on it that bring the price down. It also seems like there’s some kind of power shifting thing in 2018 with more rebates and a potential to save money by paying for low usage rates only (by presumably using the battery during the day).

Generac, Briggs&Stratton, and Kohler make many generators that are powered by LP or natural gas. These typically start at 10KW or so and go up from there. Powerwall is 5KW sustained and it lasts less than 3 hours at 5KW, after which you're without power again. Natural gas powered units cost about half as much and can run indefinitely. Indeed people even use them to power their cabins and such, with LP delivered only once or twice a year.

Legendary German engineering is a myth especially in this day and age . Sure they have an edge on few things as they were the first / had the most experience and the budget to improve on but just look at how they are loosing against the fierce competition from the US and Asia. I am not saying they are bad I am saying they are not that good as people think. They milk the brand but fail to deliver exceptional products.

When you buy from a brand with a reputation to lose, you are not buying a guarantee to an exceptional product, you are buying a guarantee to a product that is not exceptionally bad.

When you buy an appliance from an unknown Chinese manufacturer, you can get a solid product, but if you're not careful, you end up with a cheap knock-off that will break in a month. They can get away with it because nobody ever hears of them, nobody knows not to buy from them.

When you buy an appliance from a well-known German manufacturer, you can get a white-labeled product from a Chinese supplier, but most likely it will still be a piece of solid engineering. Otherwise, any incident will be in the news for weeks, and exactly those customers who bought the brand for name-recognition now avoid it for the same reasons.

I suspect that this will change as wages in China rise to a level where build quality no longer dominates the manufacturing cost and some Chinese brands will probably emerge to be seen as high-value internationally.

Yeah sure i can agree with that. What I was saying is that there is not any reason for me to buy a product from a german brand unless they are really less expensive, giving me a better deal (more features / warranty).

The only problem with Chinese products is the availability and their IP stealing not really the quality.

Bosch is still the best after 130 years.

(I worked for the world #2 supplier that's been trying to catch them for 50 years)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Bosch_GmbH

I can also vouch for Miele appliances. Though they've lasted for over 20 years, which means the company might be producing crap by now for all I know :)

I always regarded MIELE as top-notch, so I bought nearly every household/kitchen appliance from them.

Can't remember having had to call a service hotline of a specific brand that often.

Wash-dryer needed 6 repairs within the first 7 years (luckily covered by 10y warranty), dishwasher twice in 5 years, microwave/steamer and ventilation hood both once within the first 5 months.

The MIELE image unfortunately took quite some damage based on my personal experience.

I do not believe they have an edge. They might be sticking to the few features = less moving parts = smaller chance to break but the materials are same cheap plastics and weak metals.

It's not a "myth". Germany holds a disproportionate market share in heavy industrial equipment and their higher end cars are second to none as far as ICE cars are concerned. Every time I pop the hood on my BMW to top up the windshield fluid, I can't help but admire just how "right" and uncompromising the engineering is. You can tell no corners were cut. That is a very rare commodity in this day and age.

They are far from "second to none".

They are good, but for the price they command they should be better (Audi markets their cars as "luxury", but their quality is just average, see the latest JD Power study [1], also Hyundai's dependability is above BMW's)

Eagerly awaiting "dependability is not everything" comments :-)

[1] http://www.jdpower.com/press-releases/2017-vehicle-dependabi...

Which would you rather drive, a Hyundai or a BMW? And which in your opinion has a better engine, transmission, suspension, interior, etc.

Define better. Hyundai makes everything from toilets to aegis equipped war ships. If i would have the money i would buy tesla. If i would have to choose i would buy hyundai genesis or sonata. If someone was offering free hyundai or bmw i would pick bmw due to its resale value not quality

I'd rather drive a Lexus (and I actually do own one).

I'd rather drive a car that I can use, not a car that needs to spend time in the mechanics garage being repaired.

BTW, BMW is not going out of business any time soon (unless we have a massive move towards all-electric cars in a short period of time), because there will always be people who will want to drive a "beemer".

Legendary British engineering used to be a thing too.

We could also think of it as they understanding the market needs & technology direction.

It did take a 15 year old upstart to recognize the market, but I don't think there is anything wrong in established companies trying to get into the market.

It certainly adds more competition and brings much welcomed innovation into the ecosystem.

Except the don't as they recently pulled their only electric vehicle (B-Class) and haven't exactly shown any interest in pursuing this technology in cars.

Their narrative is that nobody showed any interest when the thruth is that they had only lackluster PR and of course it wasn't a great value compared to a Tesla for instance.

The state of affairs when it comes to electric cars in car country Germany is a very sad one. Everybody keeps reiterating how we're not ready yet (not enough stations, battery production and demand, etc.) when Scandinavia is doing just fine. And their car industry is probably just a fraction of ours.

Daimler (the Mercedes parent) is quite active in the space of hybrids, plug-in hybrids, fuel cells and fully electric cars:

Here are three electric models that company currently produces:

- Denza ( in cooperation with BYD): http://www.denza.com/?s=eng&r=single/overall

- smart: https://www.smart.com/en/en/index/smart-fortwo-electric-driv...

- fuso eCanter: https://www.ecanter.com/en.html

electric bus coming in 2018: https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/19/mercedes-benz-confirms-...

A 26-ton electric truck is in the making: https://www.daimler.com/products/trucks/mercedes-benz/merced...

Together with Ford and the German automakers, Daimler is building an electric charging network: https://www.daimler.com/innovation/efficiency/ultra-fast-cha... , they are also the lead investor in ChargePoint

The electric B class was a cooperation with Tesla wasn't it? As Tesla becomes a more serious competitor I can see why they'd want to curtail that to focus on their own technology.

People lap up this narrative about Tesla beating all the traditional companies but the bottom line is they're tiny and loosing money, while the others are making it.

At the moment in Europe it seems like hybrids are a much better choice than a fully electric car.

Even in Germany rapid charging stations (i.e. 80% charge in 30 minutes) are few and far between, so if you plan on going on a road trip it's not going to be a very good experience. As a city car it would be viable, but electric cars are very expensive for comparable non-electric models (e.g. the VW Up is €9850 and the e-Up is €26900).

Plus depending on how the electricity is generated it may not even be better for the environment, e.g. in the U.K. an electric car uses the equivalent of 5.5l/100km petrol - which is the same or worse than a hybrid. As more clean energy is produced it will improve, but it will take a while to get to that point.

> Except the don't as they recently pulled their only electric vehicle (B-Class) and haven't exactly shown any interest in pursuing this technology in cars.

The e-Smart is quite successful as a car sharing platform. But yes, there are forces inside Daimler that actively work against the E-mobility efforts of other parts of the company.

> The state of affairs when it comes to electric cars in car country Germany is a very sad one.

Yes; for some strange reason[0], no money goes to advancing generic charging infrastructure, but instead to research projects benefiting individual OEMs.

[0] OK, it's plain corruption

There's nothing wrong with other companies getting involved, the comment merely highlights that it took a small company with lot of media attention to set the direction for a larger industry. It's no problem for Tesla, it was their plan all along to encourage competition.

> the comment merely highlights that it took a small company with lot of media attention to set the direction for a larger industry.

Isn't that very often the case though? Think iPod/iPhone. Apple was a nobody in those spaces when those devices were released.

Media attention is usually required only when a consumer product is at stake.

Take, for example, current upstarts competing with Cisco in networking gear. Not much media exposure but a quite revolution.

In the history of business, its almost always the upstart that upends business.

Examples include Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft.

Who are the network hardware upstarts you're thinking of? What are they bringing to the market which is changing it?

Not able to remember names right now but I remember seeing a lawsuit by Cisco against one of thwir ex-directors or so, just a few weks back.

Basically Cisco is facing competition from startups implementing hardware in COTS components and innovating in features through software.

So, are we going to erase the Prius and GM EV1 from the history books?

Also, I'm still not convinced that hybrids aren't a better solution than full EV.

Not to rain on your cirklejerk, but Daimler was an early investor in Tesla and has assisted on the Tesla S. E.g. the driver-assist stalk that is used to control Autopilot is the exact part from the S class.

Considering that they need to recycle used car batteries, each car manufacturer will have it's own "energy storage" solution.

I even think it's gonna help Musk ventures. Now Tesla is not the odd one trying this weird E thing.

Usable capacity is 18kWh. Not sure why they've got a 10% discrepancy between their ad and the data sheet. Awfully early to be lying already.

18kWh is the nominal capacity. Pretty much every vendor advertises the theoretical maximum capacity but not all of them are honest to also give you the nominal capacity. Just like some people recently found out that the Model S 85 actually only had 81kWh capacity with 77kWh usable [1]. Similarly my electric motorcycle advertises 13kWh capacity but clearly says it has only 11.4kWh nominal capacity [2].

[1] https://electrek.co/2017/01/24/tesla-teardown-100-kwh-batter... [2] http://www.zeromotorcycles.com/zero-s/specs.php?model=sr

For the car: You mostly care about range -- after aggregating for things like battery capacity, efficiency, drag, etc.

That's not necessarily true for a storage system.

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