These people say this tiny house is the “Tesla” of tiny homes. What do you think?

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Tesla Motors, along with AES Corp., and Altagas, may have just brought an end to fossil fuels—at least, in southern California.

The three companies each recently took substantial battery storage plants online.

“Any one of these projects would have been the largest battery storage facility ever built,” Bloomberg Tech reported. “Combined, they amount to 15 percent of the battery storage installed planet-wide last year.”

So, just what is a battery storage plant?

As opposed to other more common types of energy storage plants, many of which burn natural gas, battery storage plants store excess energy in, you guessed it, batteries. Very massive batteries.

The three new battery storage projects were created to help mitigate future crises like the Aliso Canyon leak in Los Angeles’s Porter Ranch neighborhood, which leaked thousands of tons of methane into the air for four months between late 2015 and early 2016 before it was eventually sealed. The ongoing leak caused numerous families to have to temporarily abandon their homes. Many suffered health issues, loss of wages, and other issues directly related to the leak.

“Tesla moved particularly nimbly, completing in just three months a project that in the past would have taken years,” notes Bloomberg.

All three battery storage projects were completed in less than six months.

“There were teams working out there 24 hours a day, living in construction trailers and doing the commissioning work at two in the morning,” Tesla Chief Technology Officer J.B. Straubel told Bloomberg. “It feels like the kind of pace that we need to change the world.”

Like other nascent alternative energy industries—namely solar and wind—battery storage comprises a significantly small percentage of the grid, having been more expensive than gas-based plants like Aliso Canyon.

“But prices for lithium-ion batteries have fallen fast—by almost half just since 2014,” notes Bloomberg. Electric cars, like the ones Tesla Motors have made so desirable, “are largely responsible,” reports Bloomberg, “increasing demand and requiring a new scale of manufacturing for the same battery cells used in grid storage.”

And California, where the three new battery storage plants are now online, could see more dependence on batteries in the near future. Tesla aims to provide 15 gigawatt hours solely out of its battery storage by the 2020s.

“California is mandating that its utilities begin testing batteries by adding more than 1.32 gigawatts by 2020,” explains Bloomberg. “For context, consider this: In 2016, the global market for storage was less than a gigawatt.”

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It used to be that if you opted for a solar roof for your home, it was an eco-conscious but not a particularly aesthetic choice. But all that changed in October, when Tesla CEO Elon Musk introduced a new solar roof that is as beautiful as it is green.

“If you install our solar roof on your house, you’re going to want to call your neighbors over and say ‘check out the sweet roof!’” Musk said at the October presentation.

Perhaps the most amazing thing about the look of the new roof tiles is how well they blend into a traditional roof. The four distinct styles of product are made from quartz glass, which is transparent to solar but appears opaque when viewed from an angle, and even resembling traditional materials, from slate to terra cotta. This even means that you could add solar tiles to just part of the roof.

“We need to make solar panels as appealing as electric cars have become,” Musk said. “It needs to be beautiful, affordable, and seamlessly integrated. If all of those things are true, why would you go any other direction?”

In addition to being aesthetically pleasing, the solar tiles are also quite durable, built to last about two or three times longer than asphalt tiles.

“They should last longer than the house,” said Musk.

And there’s another very good reason to opt for these panels over traditional roofing materials: these solar panels generate enough energy to fully power a household, even on a shady day; the Tesla solar roof will be sold in tandem with Tesla Powerwall battery units, developed with an essential new element of solar power – electricity storage.

Electricity storage is already common in solar-heavy regions, where the solar energy produced in the middle of the day can be stored and used at night.

“The future is going to overwhelmingly be solar plus battery,” Musk said. “They go together like peanut butter and jelly.”

By designing the solar roofs to work hand-in-hand with Powerwall, Tesla has created an all-in-one system with units that can store 15kWh of energy, enough to power a four-bedroom house for a day.

“In order to make his vision move forward, Musk is using design with a big D,” Andy Ogden, Chair of the Industrial Design Department at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California, told Wired. “He’s thinking about an overall strategy, in how these things interact and support each other, so there’s some synergy.”

Tesla is partnering with SolarCity on the new products; Tesla will likely merge with the company, run by his cousins, depending on the November 17 decision of the shareholders.

While pricing information and availability remain to be addressed — Brian Cinnamon of Green Tech Media guesses that the Tesla solar roof will cost about $15,000 for a set that is capable of producing 9,000 kilowatt-hours per year — keep an eye out for these new panels in time for summer 2017, if the merger goes according to plan.

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Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and all around green-energy badass, is a powerhouse of an innovator. That got us thinking that perhaps Musk should become the president of Earth. Not convinced? We’ll give you three reasons why.

1. He’s dedicated to creating clean energy for everyone

According to the Wall Street Journal, Musk recently unveiled a line of “home and industrial battery packs” that he says will “change the fundamental energy infrastructure of the world.”

Grist reports that the new endeavor is called Tesla Energy: “[Musk’s] goal is to riddle the world with much-needed solar power storage devices that will usher us into a post-fossil fuel, carbon-zero future, thus saving humankind from climate apocalypse.”

Musk made this announcement, appropriately, on May Day (May 1); a traditional day of renewal about Powerwall, the new battery, which will be wall-mounted and can be used in all homes. More from Tesla Motors’ press kit:

“Tesla Powerwall is a rechargeable lithium-ion battery designed to store energy at a residential level for load shifting, backup power and self-consumption of solar power generation. Powerwall consists of Tesla’s lithium-ion battery pack, liquid thermal control system and software that receives dispatch commands from a solar inverter. The unit mounts seamlessly on a wall and is integrated with the local grid to harness excess power and give customers the flexibility to draw energy from their own reserve.”

Read more about Powerwall’s undeniable benefits here.

2. Musk has been all about renewable energy and space exploration since a young age — and he was willing to make sacrifices to work in those fields

Musk was recently interviewed by Neil deGrasse Tyson. In the interview, Musk revealed that he has always wanted to work on creating renewable energy. But to prove to himself that he could survive if he failed, he decided to live off almost nothing. To survive, he bought food in bulk from a supermarket and lived on hot dogs, pasta, and oranges. The Washington Post quoted a bit from the Tyson interview:

“‘You get really tired of hot dogs and oranges after awhile,’ he said. ‘And of course pasta and a green pepper and a big thing of sauce. And that can go pretty far, too.’ “

Now, that’s dedication.

3. He’s open about how hard it is to do what he does

Now, this isn’t the most flattering news about Musk floating around, but it’s undeniably real. In Ashlee Vance’s biography about Musk, she reports that one time, Musk got after an employe for missing a meeting to attend a child’s birth. Now, Musk has forcefully said that this isn’t true, and truly, we’ll never really know if it is or isn’t. But in a recent interview, Musk admitted to an interviewer that he doesn’t always give his kids direct attention.

Forbes reports that Musk said that often times, he is with his kids while he is working and emailing. He contends that he has to do both at once in order to get his job done. Now, that may sound harsh, but it’s probably true. While that information may not sit well with all of us, it’s at least refreshing to hear him speak his own truth.

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Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, has said that the company will remove the patents decorating the walls of its Silicon Valley headquarters. It will not sue anyone who in good faith wants their electric car technology.

According to the Tesla blog, “Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers. We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.”

Tesla Motors wants to clear the path for others who want to create a compelling electric car, and patents hinder that goal. The company initially garnered patents because it feared a competitor would copy its ideas and overwhelm the company financially, but that’s been far from the reality, according to Musk.

“We couldn’t have been more wrong. The unfortunate reality is the opposite: electric car programs (or programs for any vehicle that doesn’t burn hydrocarbons) at the major manufacturers are small to non-existent, constituting an average of far less than 1% of their total vehicle sales.”

Musk hopes that other companies will begin to fill the electric car space, though few have tried since he co-founded Tesla Motors a decade ago and became CEO in 2008. Since then, Tesla has unveiled an electric sports car, the Tesla Roadster, a four door Model 5, and a larger Model X, which is scheduled to begin production in 2015. The company also sells its electric powertrain systems to Daimler for the Smart EV and to Mercedes and Toyota for the Rav4 EV.

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Think a luxurious vehicle and an eco-friendly lifestyle are mutually exclusive? Think again. The Tesla Model S is just one of a growing number of dream cars that deliver zero-emission performance.

For many generations, the automobile represented America’s lust for independence, self-expression, and yes, wealth. Back in the 1950’s and ’60’s, no one was thinking about carbon emissions or dependence on fossil fuels. All we wanted was a shiny paint job, a big engine, and to feel the wind in our hair as we sped off into the sunset.

Some of us still want these things, but knowledge of what those gas-guzzling engines do to the planet keeps us from indulging. We choose tiny cars that get much better gas mileage, or perhaps we opt to bike or walk whenever possible. But what if it were possible to feel the thrill of screaming down the highway without leaving a trail of pollution behind you? The Tesla Model S, one of the most popular all-electric cars to hit the U.S. market, and the four other dream cars on this list, make it possible.

1. Tesla Model S

The Tesla Model S offers two battery size options, with the biggest capable of supplying 300 miles of travel at 55 mph. But who wants to go 55? Top speed for the Tesla Model S is around 130 mph (not your average electric car, eh?). The average annual fuel cost for comparable gas-powered dream cars is over $5,000–the Tesla costs about $934. And have we mentioned it’s stunning to look at?

2. BMW i3

The latest to appear on the all-electric luxury car scene, the BMW i3 was only unveiled a few weeks ago. And while it is a hatchback, it still lives up to BMW’s high standards for aesthetic appeal and performance. “The car is designed to go from zero to 60 miles per hour (mph) in 7 seconds, up to top speeds of 93 mph,” reports Green Biz. About 25 percent of the plastics in the interior and 25 percent of the thermoplastics parts on the exterior were sourced from recycled materials or renewable sources, says BMW. The i3 will hit showrooms in the U.S. in spring 2014.

3. Fisker Karma

The Fisker Karma was one of the first brands to prove that you can have luxury and performance while eliminating carbon emissions. It features a “a very respectable 403 horsepower coupled with a jaw dropping 951 lb-ft of torque” which delivers “a zero-to-60 time of 7.9 seconds and a 95 mile per hour top speed – in electric-only “Stealth Mode,” according to Left Land News. The Karma offered it all, and many had high hopes for the brand. Unfortunately, the company has experienced money troubles in the past year, and some fear it will fold. Silver lining: the once $100,000 car can now be scooped up for about half the price.

4. Venturi America

Venturi calls the America a “high-riding sports car,” and with impressive ground clearance and a dune-buggy like appearance it’s not hard to see why. The valet will never bottom out when parking this two passenger beauty. “Powered by a 53 kWh lithium-ion polymer battery, the America has a driving a range of around 186 miles (presumably in Cruising mode) with a top speed of 124 miles per hour,” reports Autoblog. The bad news? Venturi is only making 100 of these door-less electric enduro cars, and in an ironic twist, none of will be sold in the U.S.

5. Rimac Concept One

Developed by a Croatian company called Rimac Automobili, the Concept One is meant to destroy our assumptions about how dream cars operate. The Concept One uses a set of four electric motors, one for each wheel, which allow the car to go from 0 to 60 mph in only 2.8 seconds, not topping out until about 190 mph. The interior, designed by the leather-specialists from Vilner, makes you feel like you’re in a well-appointed space ship, right down to the high-tech dials and ergonomic, hand-tailored seats.

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Rumor has it that the country’s most successful electric car company could be working with Google to introduce self-driving capabilities.

Nearly every auto manufacturer on the planet offers or is working on an electric car. For some, it’s only a tiny aspect of their fleet. For Tesla Motors, it’s everything. Dedicated only to the creation of sleek, high-performance plug-in cars, Tesla recently made headlines by announcing that it is on track to repay a $465m Department of Energy loan 9 years ahead of schedule. For car makers just struggling to break even on their EV dreams, the news was proof that Tesla is ahead of the game. Way ahead.

The success helps to explain another astounding announcement: Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, is talking with Google about adding driverless technology to his already awesome line of electric vehicles.

Google is the poster company for auto-piloted vehicles, a project that is already in testing on open roadways and has the entire auto industry buzzing. In an article describing the experience of riding in an auto-piloted car, Forbes’ Joann Muller writes, “The car we were riding in was a white Lexus RX450h outfitted with a $65,000 laser sensor on the roof, and other gear that included radar sensors in the front and rear bumpers, a high-def camera looking out from the windshield, and another looking inward at the passengers…On the instrument panel, a graphic depicted each of the cars around us as a white rectangle and tracked its movement relative to ours.”

Once you get over the initial shock and horror of allowing the car to merge onto the freeway at 65 mph without your help, the idea of riding in a self-piloted vehicle starts to sound cool. Eventually, you could take a road trip to catch up on some reading, safely send a text, or perhaps even sleep. The only imperfection would be that you’re still flinging pollution into the atmosphere. But that would change with an autonomous Tesla that runs on electricity.

“I like the word autopilot more than I like the word self-driving,” Musk said in an interview. “Self-driving sounds like it’s going to do something you don’t want it to do. Autopilot is a good thing to have in planes, and we should have it in cars.” As Engadget reports, “a hidden configuration page in current Tesla vehicles’ digital control panel reveals some additional features, including Blind Spot Detection, Adaptive Cruise and Lane Departure Warning. Though currently disabled, each could indicate plans to add automation features to the all-electric car.

The biggest hurdle, of course, is money. “The problem with Google’s current approach is that the sensor system is too expensive,” Musk said. “It’s better to have an optical system, basically cameras with software that is able to figure out what’s going on just by looking at things.”

If anyone can find a way to squeeze more tech into a car for less money, however, it’s Tesla. The company’s Model S sedan has a $69,900 base price, a far cry from The Roadster, the company’s first offering, which started at $109,000. The goal, according to Musk,  is to offer a model for about $30,000 within a few years.

Image: jurvetson and jurveston

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