Image: Tesla
Electric transport, sustainable power generation, and stationary battery energy storage are the three pillars of a sustainable energy future, according to Elon Musk. Tesla is working on all of them, and a swift scaling up of their production will accelerate achieving that goal.
Many people mistakenly believe that Tesla is a conventional automaker. Some of them do not go into details, and others deliberately downplay Tesla's contribution to the development of the world in extremely important directions. Be that as it may, Tesla's main goal is to help expedite the move from a mine-and-burn hydrocarbon economy toward a sustainable electric economy; almost all of the company's products, then, are simply a means to achieve that goal.
Johnna Crider recently visited Giga Texas to interview Tesla CEO Elon Musk for her podcast Getting Stoned. Gail Alfar joined this meeting, where she had the opportunity to ask a few questions of her own. In her article on the What's Up Tesla blog, she shared valuable insights from a conversation about a sustainable future for humanity.
"Absolutely, energy is the foundation of the economy. Civilization would crumble immediately if we didn't have it. There would be mass starvation. Terrible. – Elon Musk"
Elon recently revealed to the public that he is working on the Tesla Master Plan: Part 3 and, during the interview, delved into it a bit. He once again reminded us that the sustainable energy future has three pillars: electric transport, sustainable power generation, and stationary battery energy storage, each of which must be perfectly developed in order to fulfill their function. Tesla's main activity is focused on this, which means thorough work in all three directions and even more.
Among all, stationary battery energy storage is of great importance, so the company is ramping up its production. Elon said this will be a very large part of Tesla's business in the long term and will be a critical part of the overall energy solution for Earth.
He revealed that Tesla estimates that humanity will need about 300 terawatt-hours to store energy, or 300,000-gigawatt hours. He specified that this should be enough to completely transform Earth, including all electricity, transport, and heating. Thus, it is necessary to produce a huge number of stationary batteries. With an estimated battery life of about 20 years before disposal, Elon calculated that 15 terawatt-hours of steady annual production would be needed. Tesla's current production is around 1,000 gigawatt-hours per year, which shows an obvious problem.
Elon said that, with this in mind, scaling is the main issue and he will make it the core of the third part of his Master Plan. He also emphasized that the fundamental governor of the rate for how quickly Tesla can move to sustainability is “the rate at which we can grow the output of lithium-ion batteries.”
© 2022, Eva Fox | Tesmanian. All rights reserved.
_____________________________
We appreciate your readership! Please share your thoughts in the comment section below.
Article edited by @SmokeyShorts, you can follow him on Twitter
About the Author
Eva Fox
Eva Fox joined Tesmanian in 2019 to cover breaking news as an automotive journalist. The main topics that she covers are clean energy and electric vehicles. As a journalist, Eva is specialized in Tesla and topics related to the work and development of the company.
