[ag56]

Surprised there’s no discussion on the price delta here - I could buy 10x power-walls for $110k, or 1x E F150 for $40k and get a free truck thrown in.

As someone with a large house who just investigated a hybrid power walls + gas generator + solar backup solution and didn’t go through with it due to cost, this is huge. I am literally considering buying an F150 to just keep parked stationary behind my garage.

[slg]

>Surprised there’s no discussion on the price delta here - I could buy 10x power-walls for $110k, or 1x E F150 for $40k and get a free truck thrown in.

The reason there is no discussion of price delta is at least partially because the price of the truck discussed in the article is not the $40k variant. 10 Powerwalls would be 140 kWh of battery while the $40k F-150 Lightning would be 98 kWh. The one mentioned in the article with the 131 kWh battery is nearly double the price starting at $72.5k. That still might make the F-150 the better solution, but accuracy is important.

[vlovich123]

10 Powerwalls: 1.27 Wh/$ 1 40k truck: 3.5 Wh/$ 1 72.5k truck: 1.8 Wh/$

I think you're better off getting the 40k truck. I have no idea how Ford is getting batteries for so much cheaper for the 40k truck.

[slg]

Your general question is fair, but your math is wrong which exaggerates the difference.

10 Powerwalls: 140 kWh / $110k = 1.27 Wh/$ 1

40k truck: 98 kWh / $40k = 2.45 Wh/$

72.5k truck: 131 kWh / $72.5k = 1.81 Wh/$

That said, I would speculate the that base model is effectively being subsidized by the marketing team. Saying it "starts at under $40k" sounds a lot better than "starts at under $73k". Ford simply won't produce that model in high quantities and they also know people generally won't be buying the base model anyway.

[enragedcacti]

Apparently 1/5 Lightning's are the $40k pro model for the commercial market. I wouldn't be surprised if Ford is selling at a loss, but it's more likely to get the foot in the door of electrifying work trucks and making sure companies are investing in electric infrastructure so that Ford can replace the other 90% of the companies fleet with electric at a profit.

https://insideevs.com/news/584709/ford-one-five-f150-lightni...

[Dan_-]

The 72.5k truck only provides about 90 kwh at 9.6kw

90 / 72.5 = 1.24 Wh/$

Source is a footnote on Sunrun's site: "3When home is properly equipped and home transfer switch disconnects home from the grid. Based on 30kWh use per day using the F-150 Lightning with the extended range battery...." It requires the 80A charger which costs $4k + installation + the electrical upgrades to send 80A to wherever your charger is located.

It's incompatible with many solar systems too.

[ActorNightly]

>I have no idea how Ford is getting batteries for so much cheaper for the 40k truck.

Because F150 is the number one vehicle sold in US, and Lightning is the platform that is aiming to replace it in the future. Ford probably has long term supply contracts with battery manufacturers.

[nielsbot]

Or maybe Tesla is charging a lot

[cloudwalking]

They aren’t, yet. There is enough demand that Ford does not need to produce these smaller pack cars for a few years at least. Much like Tesla, they announce the cheaper (shorter range) config, but enough demand exists they never need to actually build it.

[bluGill]

The larger pack gets you a much larger towing capacity, in exchange for less cargo capacity (weight, not volume). You don't get much cargo either way, so for the commercial market trailers seem like something you have to have, and the extended range battery is thus required.

[cmrdporcupine]

Yep. And here in Canada my understanding is the $40k (US) variant won't even be sold to consumers. Fleet vehicle only.

This is an ongoing switcheroo with EV manufacturers unfortunately. Targeting the high margin luxury segment only. They announce lower trims with cheaper prices only so that they can bait consumers but also get in good with various government subsidies.

Likely it all has to do with battery supplies. There's just not enough of them.

[namlem]

Many fleet purchasers are very much interested in the short range model. It's being targeted at businesses, not end consumers. Local businesses like landscapers don't need a ton of range. I believe Ford's long term strategy is to make up for the small margin with high volume on this model.

[cloudwalking]

Yes that is a good long term strategy, but short to medium term, there are not enough batteries, and batteries are not cheap enough. It's aspirationally priced (which is OK because there is so much demand for the expensive models too right now).

[antisthenes]

Nice exposition of Tesla's grift.

For all that screaming about $100/kWh packs, none of those cost savings ever seem to trickle down to the end customer.

[toiletfuneral]

do we know the margins on Tesla Powerwalls?

[lupire]

Presumably extremely high, because we can't name a competitor and battery supply is limited by manufacturing logistics not supply/demand.

[namlem]

There are actually quite a lot of companies in that space, though mostly pretty small ones. Panasonic does sell their own home battery system though.

[tails4e]

You can buy LFP cells for about 2k for 10kwh, so this is 5wh/$, the use case is for a diy alternative to powerwall, but long story short, I'm sure Ford pay less for their batteries.

[rsync]

10x powerwalls for 110k or f150 for 40k …

… or generac with 100amp breaker for 4K …

We power our house and our outbuildings/barns with no problems - even using 30a dryer and 20a microwave, etc. - all from the generator.

500 gallon propane tank implies at least 7 days of runtime but much more if we conserved. I can’t believe we lived without this …

[edaemon]

The cost comparison should be more than just the thing that provides backup electrical power, though. The Lightning includes a vehicle and a different power source. It's an entirely different system.

Generac + truck + propane + gasoline

vs.

Truck + electricity

Over time it almost certainly works out in favor of the Lightning. Throw solar panels in as a source of power (for both your house and vehicle) and it becomes even more cost-effective.

[bluGill]

Sure, but I have propane for heating anyway. My generator is already pretty old and should last a lot longer, meanwhile cars rust and wear out after about 10 years.

[lupire]

With maintenance, cars last about 20years unless they get extremely high mileage.

[lupire]

Truck also has insurance cost, and coat (energy, higher insurance) of using an overlarge truck for driving when you would have used a smaller car one otherwise.

[HWR_14]

> 500 gallon propane tank implies at least 7 days of runtime but much more if we conserved. I can’t believe we lived without this

How unreliable is your power grid? It's a lot easier having someone else manage the entire infrastructure. Unless you're in an area with common widespread natural disasters there's no reason to expect a 7 day outage ever.

[rsync]

"Unless you're in an area with common widespread natural disasters there's no reason to expect a 7 day outage ever."

We live on a ranch near San Francisco.

We have several 24 hour and 1 or 2 48 hour long outages every winter.

See, when your power goes out you are one of thousands affected and your utility will spend man hours and overtime, etc., to get it back on very quickly. When our power goes out we are one of five. Or one of ten. They'll get to us Monday. Monday afternoon, that is.

I forget what year it was (2017 ?) our area had a 7-ish day power outage ... related to fires and PG&E transmission shutoffs. In other recent years we have had multi-day outages for similar reasons.

We've always needed a generator because of how long it takes service crews to get to remote, rural, dead-end locations like ours - but in 2022 even people in town want them because of the administrative power shutoffs ...

[988747]

>> We have several 24 hour and 1 or 2 48 hour long outages every winter.

That makes the US seem like a third world country. In my apartment in central Europe I experienced only one, few hours long, power outage in over 10 years (not counting the few times when electricity was temporarily cut off because of unpaid bills :)

[rsync]

Yes and no.

On the one hand I do find it to be an example of civilizational inadequacy and I am critical of my state and local government as a result.

On the other hand, I have made a decision to live in a very, very rural place that has almost nothing at all in common with the very urban place you describe living in.

[lolsal]

> Unless you're in an area with common widespread natural disasters there's no reason to expect a 7 day outage ever.

Are thunderstorms considered a natural disaster (sincerely asking)? I've lived in a few states, in a few rural areas and sometimes storms would knock power lines down for a handful of days. I don't remember any 7 day stretches, but 2-4 days was not uncommon. Even more in the winter when I was in a snowy area.

[mbreese]

Not usually, but you’re absolutely right to think about it. My dad lives in a rural area in the Midwest and often has to deal with power outages lasting for a few days after particularly bad storms or ice. I think 7 days is probably on the long side of an expected outage, but not too crazy to plan for.

[nybble41]

> I've lived in a few states, in a few rural areas and sometimes storms would knock power lines down for a handful of days. I don't remember any 7 day stretches, but 2-4 days was not uncommon.

A derecho[0] hit in my area (eastern Iowa) in August of 2020. This is an urban & suburban area with fairly reliable power—even short outages are rare, and I can't think of any instances where power was out more than a few hours—but after that storm there were dozens of miles of high-voltage power lines in need of complete replacement, along with supporting structures in some cases, as well as issues with generators and substations. My own home was without power for at least four days and some of my friends didn't get their power back for almost two weeks.

I used my vehicle's 1kW alternator as a generator for the first two days to run a portable 12V refrigerator and to recharge devices & battery packs in combination with a 200W inverter. It used surprisingly little fuel, perhaps 1/3 gallon per hour at most, and it was quieter and had better-filtered exhaust than the portable generators some of my neighbors were using, though of course it wouldn't be able to handle higher-power appliances like residential refrigerators or A/C. After that I took an impromptu trip out of the affected area until the power was restored—we never actually reached a point where one couldn't find gasoline for vehicles or generators, but there were long lines are all the local gas stations and I didn't want to risk it when there was another choice.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_2020_Midwest_derecho

[HWR_14]

I wouldn't consider a standard thunderstorm a natural disaster in what I was referring to. A hurricane, earthquake or tornado would be (although a very severe thunderstorm could be). I've never seen a thunderstorm knock out power for a meaningful amount of time. But it could be because I don't live in a particularly rural area.

[rotifer]

I expect we mostly agree, but I disagree with your use of "ever". :-)

From the "January 1998 North American ice storm" Wikipedia article [1]:

    The area south of Montreal [...] was nicknamed the triangle noir ("dark or black triangle") [...] for the total lack of electricity for weeks.
    
    [...]
    
    In Quebec alone, 150,000 people were without electricity as of January 28.

(The storm started about Jan. 4.) The Montreal area is not prone to common natural disasters.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1998_North_American_ic...

[doubled112]

Some Ottawa residents have been without power since May 21.

After the storm whipped through, I believe over 170K customers were without power.

That's not a time line I'd ever have considered possible in a major city in May.

Worst it's ever been, supposedly. Topped the 1998 ice storm and the tornado in 2018 for number of people in the dark.

[HWR_14]

That was 4 million people in an event that was so rare that it's the standout example of the last 40 years. The majority of people in North America seem unlikely to experience such an outage.

[SomewhatLikely]

I would have thought the same until I moved to a suburb of Seattle. We've had two 5+ day periods of power outage in the last couple years. And it's not like we're exactly in the boonies. Houses in our neighborhood are densely packed and regularly go for $2+ million. But there's lots of trees in the Pacific Northwest and when the wind blows hard it knocks down branches across the whole region, so 50k+ people lose power all on the same day due to many downed lines and it takes a week to get to everyone.

[reactjavascript]

>> How unreliable is your power grid?

With climate change, I believe a lot of formerly reliable power grids will become less so in the future. Investments in distributed power generation and local storage will likely lead to a higher quality of life outcome for more people.

[_carbyau_]

I heartily agree. Climate change isn't about a gentle 2 degree rise in temperatures. It is about 2 degrees over the whole damn planet being a LOT of energy and it isn't distributed evenly. This means more extreme weather events - both cold and hot - than we have been historically used to.

Electrical distribution will have to get better to keep expected reliability. Or if you are cynical about the prospects of that actually occurring, you cover your own needs.

[Raptor22]

> How unreliable is your power grid?

If you live in Puerto Rico, extremely unreliable [0, 1]

> It's a lot easier having someone else manage the entire infrastructure

Indeed it is, if they're competent [2, 3]

> Unless you're in an area with common widespread natural disasters there's no reason to expect a 7 day outage ever

Puerto Rico, along with the mid to southern east coast of the US, along with coasts on the Gulf of Mexico, are not strangers to powerful hurricanes. As climate change gets worse, the impacts of these phenomena may increase. After Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico in September of 2017, it took *months* for power to be restored to most of the island [4]

[0] (Island-wide outage in 2016, before Hurricane Maria): https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-37436392

[1] (Island-wide outage in April of this year): https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2022/04/07/major-...

[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/businesses-puerto-rico-f...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/09/us/puerto-rico-power-outa...

[4] https://www.npr.org/2018/08/15/638739819/nearly-a-year-after...

[HWR_14]

Yeah, PR (and TX and CA) seem to have poor power grids.

PR (and parts of TX) at least have the excuse of hurricanes. Although TX failing because of the unexpected people turning on their ACs in the summer is a bit much.

[kube-system]

You can be on a very reliable grid, and lose power for an extended period of time due to issues with local distribution lines. This is common in areas with above ground distribution lines that experience storms.

[empyrrhicist]

Here in Iowa many would have previously said the same thing, but the Derecho a few years ago proved otherwise. Never hurts to be prepared - we now have a generator and a dc-ac converter for my Volt PHEV.

[HWR_14]

The Derecho destroyed 2/3 of the trees in the affected area. By definition, it was a uniquely bad experience as no future storm could cause that much tree damage (well, in decades if enough regrow.) Planning for a repeat seems like a mistake based on a traumatic experience with an outlier.

[empyrrhicist]

Maybe in the hardest hit areas. We did not lose 2/3 by a long shot but were still out for a week. If we experienced those winds again we'd absolutely have similar devastation. Not to mention, disaster preparedness is about flexibility. Tornados, solar flares, cyber attacks on the grid, regional cascading failures... All of these are nice times to have access to secondary power sources. Plus the one in my Volt is obviously super mobile.

[speg]

Never say ever. We just lost power for 5 days, and some are still without power today (day 9) after high winds (130km/h) ripped apart our local infrastructure. This is in Ottawa, Canada.

[technothrasher]

We've had two >7 day electricity outages in the past 15 years here in central Massachusetts due to snow storms.

[bell-cot]

Assume that there's both a lead time and a fixed cost to having the local propane supplier come out and top up your "7 day" tank. And that such tanks are readily available only in a few specific sizes, and ...

[imwillofficial]

What an inexperienced comment. Stuff happens and it pays to be prepared

[Cd00d]

Above ground power in areas with large trees is a recipe for longer power outages.

I was in northern NJ when Superstorm Sandy hit, and that suburb had many houses with multi-week outages.

[HWR_14]

Yes, a coastal region that could be exposed to hurricanes would be an area with natural disasters. And Superstorm Sandy was, IIRC, a hurricane that went so far north because of global warming.

[surfaceofthesun]

My understanding is the more natural comparison is between the ~$80k truck with the power walls since it allows the backup power solution vs manually plugging things in via extension cord. Engineering Explained had a good video about it. https://youtu.be/ATAFIoXTEe8

[ag56]

Thanks. But even at $80k it’s a no brainer. The hybrid solution I vetoed came in at $130k!

EDIT: To expand on that, only about $40k was batteries. After an initial period would fall back to (large) generator and only certain areas of house powered. I’d have to check the math, but an E F150 with a much smaller generator would be both cheaper and power the whole house indefinitely.

[bradfa]

It depends on your use case. If your use case is emergency backup power, then yeah the truck is the hands down winner. But if your use case is to load shift to minimize costs then buying a slightly smaller fixed location (ie: powerwall) battery bank which is always able to be on-line will likely make more sense, since once you drive the truck somewhere it's no longer attached to the house.

It depends on how your electricity generation, distribution, and consumption works for your own location.

But also, holy cow! $130k in powerwalls is a LOT of powerwall!

[garciasn]

Natural gas and/or propane is the best option for my home. Solar installation + battery is just insanely expensive compared to gas (6x at a minimum) and where I live offers far less reliability.

[NickRandom]

I agree. Plus any prolonged power outage (multi days) is likely to be area wide which means that topping up an F150 from a fast charger before dark and those are likely to be heavilly over subscribed (or out of action) in the local area.

With the Powerwall option you could top up your F150 at home then range further to find a working fast charger thats within the calculated power budget.

[cptskippy]

You'll need to consider that the truck uses a different battery chemistry than home battery backup solutions intended for a different use case. The truck isn't intended to power your entire home and you'll likely have to use a manual disconnect from the grid.

Also it sounds like you'd still need solar panels and a backup generator.

[moffkalast]

This especially makes sense these days now that (in most places) you can only sell your solar at bulk rates which are lower than the electricity you buy.

So you literally get your energy sold back to you at a premium for the sole service of storage which is a rather crap deal. Keeping all the power you produce seems like the best option, though you do have to pay for the initial cost of batteries.

It would be neat to see some numbers as to how long it would take to make up the cost back in monthly bill reductions depending on the local prices.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

> This especially makes sense these days now that (in most places) you can only sell your solar at bulk rates which are lower than the electricity you buy.

Here in NM, that's true if you literally sell your surplus solar. But if you allow PNM to "bank" it, you receive kW for kW back what you put in, when you need it (e.g. during the dramatically colder winters here in northern NM).

[elif]

I'm not sure where you got your numbers from, but as the owner and operator of multiple EV's and a powerwall, they sound way off to me.

But beyond that, there are big distinctions left out of your theory: for instance, that the F150 is selling for 130-145k unless you happen to be friends with a ford dealer, and that the powerwall's value is primarily derived from grid peak time cost savings, not just emergency backup.

Unless you plan to charge and discharge your car's battery daily, by, i suppose manually flicking your main breaker over (is that even legal?) you will not see that value returned with your truck.

[reactjavascript]

Ford has found value “sweet spots” with the $39k electric F-150 and the $19k, 30mpg Maverick. They are both very reasonable vehicle choices that almost any household could make use of.

[maigret]

Interesting point of view, from my European view they seem like totally frivolous vanity items that are not only bad taste but actively destroy the planet. We're in the middle of a climate and resource crisis, and you could easily make two cars out of one F150 raw material (except maybe for the battery). They weight a lot which damages the road more, they are also very dangerous for pedestrians.

Why isn't everyone looking forward a more reasonable future with cars sized after one's real needs, not damaging aspirations? I know the car industry wants cars big, but consumers should activate a little bit their brains too and think a bit about the bigger picture.

[technofiend]

Powerwalls may have a premium over other commercial solutions. Will Prowse covers everything from Powerwalls, DIY and commercial systems down to portable camping batteries on his YouTube channel [1]. For the kind of investment you're talking about, it may be worth exploring other potentially more cost-effective options outside of DIY.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/c/WillProwse

[outworlder]

> As someone with a large house who just investigated a hybrid power walls + gas generator + solar backup solution

What about solar as the primary power solution, plus powerwalls for the night. How much would it cost?

[progfix]

You should base your decisions on life cycle costs not inital costs. What is the longevity of the car battery vs. house battery? How much does their disposal cost?