During a presentation of Tesla’s energy business by Drew Baglino yesterday at the company’s Investor Day, a new charging offer was teased and set to launch this summer.
Baglino, the Senior Vice President of Powertrain and Energy Engineering at Tesla, detailed how the company’s Megafactory in Lathrop, California, was completed in less than 12 months. He noted since 2019, installation projects have increased in speed by 4x.
Tesla Electric is the company’s offering in Texas right now and is set to expand to other markets, in a similar fashion like Tesla Insurance.
The service is available for people with Powerwalls in competitive retail electricity markets in the state.
One new service coming in July, according to Baglino, is “a retail electricity plan to people who have our cars where they can have unlimited overnight home charging for $30/month.”
“This is part of reducing the total cost of ownership of our vehicles, and the reason why we can do this is because Texas has a tonne of wind. And in Texas the wind blows at night,” said Baglino.
“So we’re actually serving these customers at night for their cars is the best thing to do for everyone. This is a way to incentivize people to charge at home at night, directly from renewable power. This is part of the grand master plan we talked about at the beginning,” added Baglino, referring to the beginning of the Investor Day presentation.
You can watch Baglino detail the plan at the 2 hour and 40 minute mark of the video below:
For Tesla vehicle customers that drive a lot in Texas, this overnight charging plan may be cheaper than other options.
Tesla’s Super Charger sites could be used as virtual power plants with their Mega Packs and sell cheap overnight power that they store from cheaper daytime sources. This power could be sold back to the grid and operate as peaker plants while also serving as cheaper, more profitable ways of supplying power to EVs charging up. Tesla can buy every battery they can get their hands on because even if they get “over-run” with batteries for their vehicles, they can use them for the unlimited demand for Power Walls and Mega Packs. Just like this flexibility allows them to massively ramp both these sectors, installing Mega Packs at their Charging sites also allows them this dual option flex. No other company on the planet has been able to master this kind of optionality at this kind of scale. Only just begun! TSLA has been to the moon and to Mars but is now headed to Alpha Centauri!