Good ideas are crazy until they’re not..

Since Tesla announced, in the latest keynote, it’s new product -which I’m pretty sure we’ve all watched Elon Musk announcing it- there has been something unexpected, I would say magical going on. The correspondence has been huge. All of a sudden Tesla’s new product has been all around social media and everybody has been talking about it. Of course I’m talking about “Tesla’s Powerwall”.

To be honest when the rumors started spreading I had mixed feelings about it. The first thought that crossed my mind was: “They made a.. battery? We all know that rechargeable batteries are not that trustworthy and sustainable.” But then my second thought was: “My god… this guy (Elon) maybe just clicked together the last chain link that was missing”. But let me explain.

By the end of 2015 renewable energy resources will be producing more than 23% of the electricity generated (globally). Solar panels and wind turbines are the most common electricity generators. They are pretty reliable and with an average low maintenance cost. However they have a basic disadvantage and I don’t mean the panels or the turbines themselves. The drawback is actually that the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing 24–7–365. That’s where Tesla comes in. If their new product will work as they say, this problem is solved, I mean for good. Greenpeace in a recent article claims “Tesla just killed lignite”.

Electricity storage has been a problem not just for companies, but for households as well. As a matter of fact the Powerwall has been sold out for the rest of 2015, and guess what, most of the orders have been from households. Even Elon Musk was surprised. An important detail for the new Powerwall is that Elon is not waiting for some totally new technology, but is scaling up the tried and tested lithium-ion battery that Tesla is already using for Roadster and Model S.

For sure Tesla will face stiff competition in its plans to generate revenue through batteries. Established and deep-pocketed energy and technology players like Samsung, LG, and Saft Groupe are just a few of the names marketing products similar to Tesla’s. When Musk was asked about the competition Tesla could face, he said “We’re just not aware of who would even really be second, honestly,”.

But lets be honest here. Tesla’s powerwall is a humongous hit against fossil fuel market. The great thing about it is not the fact that a big comany is marketing a “great new invention” that will change the world. It is the fact that a personality like Elon Musk is behind it, that’s why it is going to be a huge change. The powerwall is just like when Apple introduced the “iPhone” back in 2007. It was not something new but it led to a new era in mobile phone markets. Tesla will lead the market and other companies will follow up and the whole “home-battery thing” will scale up really fast. In fact according to Business Insider: “Analysts see a multibillion-dollar market in its infancy as power companies, businesses, and home owners, partly reacting to government incentives, buy systems that stabilize the grid.”

History shows us that humanity always wants a great leader to achieve something big. What humanity -along with the environment- needs right now is a big strike against non-renewable energy markets that don’t even consider environmental costs. Elon Musk has the potential of being that leader of change that everybody has been waiting for. He has this ability of taking the breathtaking entrepreneurial leaps that others can only dream about, and because he is who he is, suddenly the world of renewable energy just moved to a whole new level. Now everybody is considering buying the powerwall or the new Model S. He just did what other competitive companies have failed to do just because they or their investors-financers didn’t, because they didn’t believe that a big change was possible.