For obvious reasons there's a lot of focus on Tesla's automobiles, but part of me wonders if these Powerpack grid batteries aren't the real innovation and killer product for the company.
My hunch is that those used batteries will single handedly store peak reusable energy for down times if electric cars grow to dominate the market.
And some restaurants switch to wholesaling and distributing their more noteworthy products and either close the restaurant or hand it over to somebody else to manage.
When you used to be the customer for your new product you have access to a wealth of insights about what could make the product work. If you are better at that than your old product, well...
Sidenote, commercial and utility battery backup like this have been sold for over 10 years. Unless you were a hotel in Vegas, you probably weren't noticing. Did they sell many, dunno, but they've been working at every distribution for a long time.
How much a threat is constrained lithium supply to the business model?
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/09/30/tesla-using-samsung-sdi...
Plenty of other viable technologies exist, we just need some rich science-aware people to help us roll them out.
I agree it's a much more tangible market from my perspective (ref. the prod issue on the vehicle side) and is only really purchasable by state actors.
If they can get the first mover advantage actually rolling before someone else enters the market than this will be a huge boon to their bottom line.
So it is with Tesla, who will be remembered for their batteries.