The stock price does seem very high though even if you DO buy into their story (which I do) - but a lot of the stock market feels high - just a lot of money sloshing around these days.
I have to imagine that's a non trivial task that would require Permission To Operate from your power company.
When you have solar/batteries installed, you have to be inspected and receive PTO from your energy provider.
They only just opened up their Beta to allow your Powerwall to backfeed power to the grid on demand.
If and when they allow vehicles to supply power to the grid, it is going to require the vehicle owner to have their setup inspected and PTO granted. I have a feeling this will dissuade people who don't already have solar/batteries from participating.
The capacity in these vehicles is actually relatively good relative to household loads.
Their powerwall stuff with grid support / virtual power plant obviously has much bigger grid impacts / risks (ie, how do workers lock out feed to grid when working on lines etc).
Part of PTO is an inspection and one of the requirements to pass is that there's an ED on the exterior of your home so the power company can come by and disconnect you from the grid.
It's kind of the reverse of registering life support systems with the power company so they know not to shut off your power.
If you have a cut over in your home you could run your house off the car power but without PTO you can't backfeed the grid. That requires inspection of your installation and external ED installed so your energy provider can disconnect your home from the grid when doing service.
> Battery storage is a competitive, commodity business.
No isn't. There is really not that much Li-Ion grid storage being deployed right now and not by that many companies. That market is growing fast.
> Not sure how huge it will be.
The amount of needed grid storage is gigantic.
Edit: Elon just said on the call that they are massively limited on production. Partly because of the chip issue, same chips are used in the cars and the cars have higher margin. But cell supply is also limited. So the demand is growing but they can't increase production as fast.
Battery construction is incredibly intricate and has a huuuuge amount of process tech. There's already a huge moat around it because of the level of knowledge needed and a severe lack of talent. That moat will only grow as more and more in house tech is developed for production and for chemistries. There's a solid chance that all the players of one of our biggest new economic sectors this century are already producing.