Whatev’s

So the Good. They look good. This is extremely important. As I have stated quite a few times in my past posts, anything that you put on your head must look good. Cannot get around this. And they do. The Image capture quality is very good as well. I took a picture in low light and the image was corrected once it got to the app on my phone. Nice.

Call quality was good as well. Not great, but very good. The person I was talking to on the other end could not tell the difference between this and normal headphones. I took a few calls on it and really liked it. In fact, I like it more then putting in and taking out ear buds if for no other reason then its easier.

The Bad. Sound quality for other the voice calls was NOT so good. Perhaps this is not intended for listening to music. I tried two tracks, a chillhop where I listen for clarity, and something a bit more bass heavy. The chillhop middles and highs were ok, but really could not feel the bottom. When I hit the bass heavy track, not only was there no bottom, it started to get noisy as I tried to turn it up. This was a BIG disappointment given how great the Bose Glasses sound.

So this is a bit of a short review, and I may add to it later, but basically, if you are into take lots of casual photos and short videos, these are pretty good. As long as its not of yourself. If you are into music, like I am, give it a miss.

I’m going to start this post with this statement: With consumer AR; function follows form. Now for most of you, you might remember the old design mantra; ‘Form follows function.’ For those that are unfamiliar, it basically implies design what you need first, then the form will follow. As a past Berkeley Architecture student this was drilled in my head. In consumer AR however, I think this is flipped. When you wear something, especially on your head, design matters. Given two products, a less attractive but more capable product vs a more attract but less capable one, people will tend to the more attractive product. Function follows form.

UPDATE: There has been an update to Android so now Dex no longer launches when connected. Sad Panda.

Cue the Nreal AR glasses. They look like ODG glasses, but smaller, and this makes a big difference. I really like the looks of the ODG, but just to bulky, heavy, and hot. Nreal removed all the compute of the head to slim it down. Yes, you lose some performance by moving CV to the phone, and yes there is now a chord hanging down the back, but given the value provided, this is minor.

In consumer AR, function follows form. Lets look a the Hololens/Magic Leap vs the Nreal. Now, they are completely different devices as far as I’m concerned. The Hololens is STILL the best AR device you can buy, but its big and expensive. The Nreal is small, light and only $500. However, what is really important here is; I can be at a cafe with the Nreal and feel OK, where I would not with the Hololens or any other capable AR device on the market. Why? Because the Nreal looks almost like a normal pair of sunglasses, yes it is far less powerful the other AR headsets, but it still supports most of my AR use cases. As such, I argue you need two things for a successful consumer AR device; a very light attractive device and access to lots of content. Combine the Nreal with a phone (better with a desktop like DeX) and you have it.

ROI: When I first got the GearVR I loved it. I was traveling a bit back then and I LOVED the fact I could put these on my head and I’m watching videos and playing games. The device only cost me just over $100 bucks and I already had the phone. The ROI was easy. I got more value out of the device than what I put into it. I also got the Vive. After a few weeks I felt done with it. It was far too troublesome to set it up. Yes the Vive is better, and could do more, but I could throw the Gear is a bag and take it anywhere. Thus I used the Gear FAR more often than the Vive.

Which brings to the main point of this post.

Consumer AR use cases will have the same ROI question. How often will you REALLY use it, and given those occasions, was it worth the money/trouble? I have read so many articles talking about all these great consumer AR use cases, virtual shopping, fitting new furniture in you place, even playing a virtual piano. How often do you really think you will use it? Most likely you will use it often if three conditions are true: 1) Easy to use/access, 2) satisfies a frequent use case, and 3) if in public, easy to carry and looks good.

Use case examples:

Before I go into these use cases, keep in mind they are not definitive or exhaustive, but instead illustrative to support the point that use cases that will support frequent use, does not need an expensive AR device to derive value from the product, in fact, less is more.

Short media consumption on the go: I define this as short sessions (say 10-20 min), alerts, short video, etc. Anything that is a quick bit of information consumption and interaction but longer than something you can see on your watch. For example; reading emails or socMed posts, viewing videos or photos. Yes you can do this on the phone, but if I have easy access to my glasses, I can enjoy a larger screen, better sound, and not keep looking down. I’ll also include HUD here as well. Walking or biking where you can get alerts and/or navigation or point of interests.

Information Augmentation. This can be language translations, getting more information on a store product, bar or QR codes, object recognition, etc.. Anything where one bit of information can be modified or expanded upon. In this case the phone would be the primary camera for capturing information allowing greater flexibility when trying to capture.

Augmented Desktop: Right now this is limited to Samsung phones as far as I know. When I connect the Nreal glasses to a Samsung phone, I get a DeX desktop. This is a big use case for me and something I can use right now when I’m away from my desk or traveling. When I plug the usbc cable into the phone, I get a 1k Desktop. Add bluetooth mouse and keyboard, and I’m set. Bonus points, as long as you are not trying to use the same app, you can run desktop on the glasses and some other app on the phone. (still need to test this more) BTW, you can use the phone as a mouse and keyboard as well. The only downside is its headlocked. I’m hoping this can be addressed.

Side bar on Travel: I used to travel quite a bit, for fun and business, and like to travel light. My current set up is to use a Samsung Fold, folding keyboard, and flat mouse. Well now with the Nreal, I will be adding one more device to my mobile war set. I have the Samsung Fold which is already a big screen, but now with the glasses, any phone should be fine. Again, we still have the issue that DeX is head locked. Side note, I still need to see if I can power the phone and keep the glasses connected at the same time. Another post for another day.

So, we just looked at 4 use cases that the current Nreal glasses and a high end phone can support. What about the chord? I got used to that really fast. For years we have been listening to our music using wire headphones and ear buds and no one has batted an eye. I have the same feeling with a chord coming from the glasses. It does not feel awkward and does not get in my way having used wired headphones for most of my life. BTW, works with a USBC extension.

Each use case has the same thing in common; they are things you would do often. They do not require too much compute power nor sensing technology. They do, however, require that you feel comfortable using them in public.

Now, I do not want to give the impression the Nreal is perfect. Far from it. It does not fit me well, (Nreal: Day 0). When I use DeX, the display is head locked. There is no easy on/off for the glasses while connected to the phone. and a few more small issues. But the main point is this. The Nreal is the first AR-lite glasses I have seen (pun intended) that sets the bar for all other AR-lite headsets to follow in the near term. Sure sometime this decade we will have wireless glasses with higher resolution and detail hand tracking and a bunch of other stuff.

But I do not want to wait that long.

For those of you who have yet to try the Daydream, its mostly a really nice Cardboard with a higher spec phone for better rendering and head-tracking.  (I talk about this in my previous post)  But what is really different, and IMOP better, is the controller. Its not the design of the controller is all that great, its the fact that its there! Having this sense of presence both from the haptics of my hand as well as my head movement greatly improves immersion and enjoyment.  The presence of a controller my not seem like a big deal, but it is.

What is really great about the Google Daydream is the commitment of a controller.  When you buy a headset, it comes with one.  Thus app devs can always rely on the fact a controller will be there. This certainty is what we are missing today.  And Samsung and other other headset makers can take cue and make it a requirement for their systems as well.  Unfortunately, as I understand it the Daydream controller will NOT work on other systems, but look for others to fill this market.

Also coming is the mobile stand-alone headset.  I do not expect to see anything beyond POC at CES2017, but I fully expect that towards the end of 2017, we should see a few come out.  These devices will have controllers as well, allowing devs to leverage previous work on the Daydream and GearVR systems into the new stand alone systems.

Also watch for 6DOF controllers as well..  This will be a bit harder to crack.  

When I first tried the Daydream I had the same response most people had.  It was small, attractive and felt great. I really like the tactile feel of it, better then the hard plastic GearVR.  My only complaint was the field of view.  However, now that I have spent a good deal of time in it, my opinion has changed somewhat. When I first tried it the strap was VERY tight, however, that kept light bleed to a min and I never really felt the weight.  However, the next time I tried it, the tight strap started to really bother me, so I loosed it. That made it far more comfortable, but then light bleed was pretty substantial.  The fit also felt a little less complete and instead felt a bit top-heavy.  Once you get into the task you are doing, a game for example, the light bleed ‘sometimes’ goes away.  What I mean here is when I’m deep into doing something in the game, I do not noticed, but at transition or other points in the game where I’m not deeply focused, the light bleed comes back to my attention. Same with the fit.  When I’m in the middle of something, I do not notice, but at transition, I cannot help but feel like the headset it resting on my forehead and not comfortably across the face.

Now to the phone.  The head tracking at the beginning feels just as good as the gear. I have to really pay attention to notice any lag. However, for whatever reason, the phone heats up very quickly. The hotter the phone gets, the slower the system becomes.  Then you can feel the head tracking slow down just a bit.  Enough that if you are standing, you can start to get motion sick.

Now here is where the Daydream is great, and its nothing to do with the headset or the phone. It’s the hand controller.  The hand controller is a simple 3DOF motion tracked device but what this does is greatly enhance immersion because you can ‘see’ you hand movements in the environment and allow you to interact with object more naturally.  So far I have not seen an amazing implementation, but give it time.  This simple controller works very well, yes it drifts but centering is not a big deal.  I really wish the GearVR came with one. I fully expect someone at sometime is going to write a driver to allow the Daydream controller to work on the GearVR if Samsung or Oculus does not make one themselves. As simple as this is, the knowledge that ALL Daydream devices will have this controller gives developers confidence to design their apps with this support.

An issue with Daydream, which I also have with the Gear is drift.  As the phone heats up it tends to drift, typically to the left.  Seems like this is just a limitation of the internal compass for now.  I’m sure they will fix it in the future.

So my final assessment:  I would buy the Daydream for a casual user, but stick with the GearVR for anyone else. A key point however is that the daydream does not need to compete with the GearVR, its needs to be a friendly, accessible device that anyone can use.  And for Google, this seem like exactly the market they are after, so despite my complaints, I think Google nailed this one spot on.

1)  Increase the fonts!

Until we get 4 k screens, we are going to have to deal with the screen door effect and our current 2K’s are not great for reading.  Increasing the font will help, but remember to let us choose it.  And while we are at it, let us change the font itself.

2)  Now once we increase the fonts, we need a bigger CURVED screen.  

I’m glad I can zoom in, but I will want to zoom in even more, but the more we zoom in, the worse a flat screen looks.  Check out Oculus VR desktop.  Learn from that.

3) Now lets talk UI.  Let me edit the URL bar.  PLEASE!

4) It does not make sense to go to ‘TABS’ to create a new window.

I understand we are creating a new ‘tab’ but its not intuitive.  I should have that option at home as well.

5) And speaking of Home, where did the recommended list go?  

Now its filled with stuff I was testing out.  If I wanted to save it I would have created a bookmark.  Please provide a way to get that back if we choose.

6) I really like the Void theater mode when viewing Videos.  

I can haz?

7) Speaking of video, lets sideload into MilkVR

I like MilkVR, its my preferred video viewer.  When selecting a video, provide an option to send that URL to MilkVR.  Even better, remember where we came from and when done watching in MilkVR, send us back to VR interwebs.

8) Swipe keyboard input would be great here.

9) Something seems to be off trying to find the <body> tag and zoom to it. 

Reddit is my test case.  Zooms in way too much. I have to back out each time.  BTW, title font on Reddit reads really well on the gear.  Clue!

10)  and finally … WebGL!  And Web3D while we are at it.

11) Rename this to VR Interwebs.  No reason.

BTW, Streetview would be nice.

Now, I think I’m going to make a version of Newssnacker.com just for the Gear!  Keep your eyes open.

First the Gear S.  I’ve been using it for 2 weeks as I gave my trusty LG First gen a rest.  Notice I said it was good, not great or I love it.  There are things about the UI that bug me, lack of apps, and I miss my integration with the Android system and Google services. But after a few weeks, the design, size and the key functions the watch does perform have won me over despite its initial size and previous listed issues.  The first thing that really surprised me is the curved screen is way more functional then I expected, but not so much from a UI/UX point of view, but the fact I can easily extend my arm and expose the watch! Such a simple thing.  And when I lower my arm, my shirt sleeve smoothly covers it again.  My LG and the few days with the Apple watch did not do this despite being smaller watches.  Even the round Moto gave me issues.  After a few weeks, what I though was a large clunky looking watch started to grow on me which is even more surprising since I got the white band instead of black like I would normally do.  The second very useful thing was wifi support and taking calls on the watch.  (I did not spring for a sim card).  The sound was clear and I found it was just as easy to take a call on the watch if I was in a quite room.  Basically as an everyday watch, the Gear S form factor is better than I thought.  It’s comfortable, quick to get used to seeing on my arm and my clothes do not get hung up on it.  More importantly, I have plenty of screen real-estate.  It may not happen overnight, but I think we will see this size curved smart watch more and more and people get used to seeing it, just like when the first large phones came out.

The Gear S form factor is just one direction in the second generation of smart watch design.  The LG Urbane will set the tone for the watch as a design artifact.  Not for everyday work, but for going out, special occasions, etc.  In other words, I can see some people owning two watches as people used to when I was young. I have the Pebble Steel with a nice leather band and tend to wear that when I go out.

I will be watching the price on the Urban ( I tend to buy used ) and most likely will use that as my replacement when the price drops enough.  As nice as the Apple watch is, it still looks like a throw back to the first attempt and smart watch design.  Sure Apple is already talking about the Apple 2 watch, but from what I understand, the form factor will be the same.  Old.

Image from http://inhabitat.com/

Ok, so this article on driver-less cabs just popped up saying NY’s Mayor de Blasio just signed with Google to have them put out a fleet of 5000 driver-less cars in Brooklyn and Queens.  They will be called Zippie.  Nice.  And that is not all; order now and get an ATM machine, vending machine spitting out mouthwash to condoms and btw the condoms will be a bit hit because I can see a trend starting on having sex in driverless cars, but that is another post.  They are even going to serve hot pizza!  What about the mess?  A 12 horse power vacuum will take care of that.  A vacumm?  How is that going to clean smeared pizza?

Does this all sound too good to be true by next year?  Yea it does.  Ok, so first off, even Google admits the driver-less car is not ready for sever weather like heavy rains, snow storms and icy roads.  This is NY we are talking about kiddies, if you ever been there in Feb.  Ug.  And serve food?  Its going to be a mess, and I’m sure some jackass will make it a worse mess.  What about legal issues?  Nothing talked about that in the post I read.

So here is what I think.. I think they are going to start putting in the ground work and doing limited tests in 2016.  Sure, you may be able to grab one of these Zippie’s next year, but I have a feeling there will be no food and running during limited times of the year ( good weather only) and limited routes.

Now you may be saying, “why such a downer man”. Actually, I’m pretty excited and looking forward to seeing even a few cabs running in limited conditions in 2016.  I want MORE cities to get in on this. Google will run the program so no one owns it. That is sooner then I would have expected from a legal perspective.  I think its great and cant wait for it.  However, lets not get crazy…. Hot Pizza?  Lets hold off on that for a bit ok?

BTW, Cabbie backlash in 3… 2… 1…

So dont blink people, the future is coming, and coming fast!

Freightliner Inspiration Truck Unveiled at Hoover Dam. First Licensed Autonomous Commercial Truck to Drive on U.S. Public Highway (PRNewsFoto/Daimler Trucks North America LLC)

A while back I wrote a post that we would see self driving trucks before we see self driving cars.  Well that truck is now officially hitting the road in Nevada, and assuming the pics are of the actual truck that is going to hit the road, its sci-fi-ish. The Inspiration truck features a system called Highway Pilot which basically lets the driver run hands free once on the highway. The other thing this system will do is let other trucks with the same system to draft each other.  Now its set to 25′ which only gives you a little bit of fuel savings, but once a number of miles and hours have been logged without any problems, then I’m sure they can make that closer and then you will see greater efficiency.

The key things to know about this system is the driver only gets hands free on the highway, and cannot leave his/her seat.  However, there is a tablet like device the driver can use to do other work that is normally done when the rig is not rolling.  I expect LOTS of emails and facebook posts once this system rolls out.  Also, the driver can take over anytime by simply grabbing the wheel or touching one of the pedals.  This is how must cruise controls work so same idea there.

Even though this does not sound like a big deal relative to seeing google cars driving all over Mountain View,  this is a MAJOR event because we can start to officially log miles and hours on a system that is in business use and not testing. So once this rig hits the road the clock starts.

image from autoblog

Now there are still concerns, as mentioned in the CNET post, there is going to be some loser who is going to try to cause an accident with the rig so they can sue.  Sigh. But again, this is something we simply have to get through and the sooner we start crossing these bridges the better.  Of course the truck will have cameras everywhere so anything someone tried will be recorded and shown to be there fault, but like I said, someone will try.

I’m excited.  The more rigs that get this system, the more miles and hours logged.  Soon cars will be allowed to have highway cruise as well which will be quality of life saver for anyone who has long commutes.  I used to drive from Mountain View to San Francisco and I WISH we had that when I doing that run.  Anyway, once we get highways on cars, then we can look to the next step, local self driving.

Car added for scale

So Friday Elon Musk finally gave us the full details on the home battery he has been hinting at for the last few months.  As expected, it’s basically a smart battery that you can mount on a wall that will smooth out your home or buildings power demand from the grid as well as extend the power delivery from solar if you have that installed. And all for the low low low price of $3000 for 7kw/hr at 1000 cycles. Sounds great right?  Well… not really.  When you do all the math, it does not work out that well… for now.

First some REALLY basic math as a thinking exercise

Musk said Tesla’s 7 kwh capacity battery would cost $3,000, while the 10 kwh capacity one would be $3,500, however that does not cover the DC-AC inverter and installation which can add another $2k.  So let’s do the easy math..  A 10 kwh system could supply 1,000 watts of current to your home for 10 hours.  ok, cool.  So if we want to be able to run this fully off the grid we are going to need more than one.

Image from http://rameznaam.com/

The U.S Energy Information Administration says that the average American home consumes about 11,000kWh per year, or about 30kWh per day. So if an average user wants to get completely off the grid, it would only take three 10kWh Powerwall units—at a total of $10,500.  That’s a lot of money to get off the grid.  If we say the average power bill is $100 a month, it will take 100+ months to ROI the units, and that is assuming you already have solar power.  If you do not, then let’s add $10k for panels, inverter and installation after rebates. (btw, costs vary GREATLY depending on location) So we need to add another 100 months.  That takes us to around 16 years to ROI the system.  ($20k/100/12)

Now that was some pretty simple math we did there and for those who really know the detail numbers, ease back on the hate mail. I went with hyper simple math just to make a point. Now, let’s look at two common use cases for the home. Remember this device is targeted for home owners; industry, and the edge of the network for those with unreliable power or very high prices are different cases.

Home use case

So we have two use cases for the Powerwall. First the home user that wants to save money by Load Shifting and second the Solar Panel owner who wants to save money and/or go off the grid.  Let’s take the most common case first.  A home owner that wants to save money.

Load Shifting

Load shifting is a pretty simple idea.  Buy power in the cheaper hours and store it.  During the day when power is more expensive, use the power you saved previously. This is called time-of-day (ToD) pricing plans, this can be a significant cost saver. Let’s do the math on that using actual ToD numbers from a US power company and assuming the battery is delivering power during the entire stretch of peak hours. (these numbers come from Tom Lombardo at enginerring.com.)

Rates: $0.203217/kWh (peak) and $0.04643/kWh (off-peak)

Peak times: 2:00PM – 7:00PM (5 hours)

Assume a constant 1.7 kW load over five hours, which completely drains the battery every day.*

8.7 kWh x $0.203217/kWh = $1.77/day (if the customer were buying electricity at peak rates)

8.7 kWh x $0.04643/kWh = $0.40/day   (customer buying electricity at off-peak rates instead)

Energy cost savings = $1.37/day or $500/year

If a person spent $3500 on the Powerwall and another $1500 on the inverter, it would take ten years (simple payback) for the unit to pay for itself.  Since it has a 10 year warranty (and so do most inverters), it’s a break even situation at best.  However, it may not work out exactly like that because remember after a number of cycles, even lithium-ion lose efficiently.  So, depending on just how far you drain the battery, it may take a little bit longer, perhaps 12 years. Now if you do not need to pull that much power during the day, then you may go with a less expensive 7Kw model and save $500, but that only changes the math for a year.  So how many home owners would drop 5k on something with a 12 year ROI if things works out?  Not many, but more than you think.  I’ll expand on that when I talk about ‘Buying against the math’.

PV (Solarpanels)

Image from http://rameznaam.com/

For the homeowners who already have PV’s, the math make no sense.  “What?” I can hear you say.  I thought this was FOR PV owners.  Well, yes, but not ALL PV owners. See the ROI for PV’s is about the same as the math we just did above, but instead of buying your power at the low rate and using it during the high rate hours, PV owners generate power during the peak hours and sell it to the power utility, then use power from the utility at the lower rate hours when the sun is down.  If designed correctly, you should have a net 0 on your power bill.  So if you are already NOT paying for power, why would you buy a Powerwall?   Ahh.. Well here is where it gets complicated, interesting and why the Powerwall will make sense in the near future, and in time, more and more home owners will buy one.

Changing the rules of the game

Lets take a little trip to Hawaii.  In Hawaii, everything costs more, including the electricity. Some home owners have been trying to buy solar to not only save money, but basically pay little to no money to the power utility.  Other home owners are paying $300 to $400 a month.  However, not everyone can get solar because the utility cannot handle so much power coming back into the system, and worse, the utility loses money when people go to solar.  Remember the utility still needs to maintain the system and they need to make improvements to the system to handle all this power coming from the PV owners. The demand for solar is so large, that some people have been waiting 3 years to get it. So what happens is those with PV pay little to nothing and everyone else has to make up the difference, so you can imagine there is a backlog of people trying to get PV.  This is becoming such a problem that Hawaii is thinking of ending the practice of buying power back at the peak rate and instead pay at 50% rate or go to a Feed-In Tariff system. This is true everywhere by the way, not just Hawaii. In fact California may fill up on the number of home buyback agreements in 2016. Paying the home owner 50% the going rate is great for the utility, but guess what happens to the home owner’s ROI.  It just doubled.

Now, remember when I said most people would not bother with a 12+ year ROI?  Well, as more PV system prices drop, more systems will get deployed and soon all utilities will have this problem, and they will all go to the same sort of solution.  Do not pay as much to buy peak power or simply have a line connection fee. If the power companies decide to not pay as much for your PV power, then it does not make sense to sell it.  Instead, you may as well hold on to it yourself and not pay for the offpeak power. Basically go partially or fully off the grid. That takes us back to the math we did in the beginning.  If you already have solar, and your utility bill is not zero’ing out anymore because the utility changed the rules, then change your math.  And now the Powerwall makes sense.  So now you see where Elon got his 5 to 10 years est.  Now that we are at the tipping point for the cost of solar, and now that we have the Powerwall that makes home storage affordable and smart, the utilities will see more PV systems deployed and lose more money. They will be forced to make a change, and soon.

One is not enough

You may be asking yourself, or me depending if you are one of those people who like to yell at the screen of your computer thinking the author can hear you, that 12 year ROI is really not that bad.  That is basically the same ROI for solar today.  Well there is some details I left out.

Remember in the beginning of our simple math what it would take to get ‘off the grid’?  We did not buy just ONE of these units.  We bought three. Taking us to $10.5k  There is another reason you want 3 of these bad boys and that is because the power output of one these units is just 2kW continuous, 3.3kW peak.  So good luck running your 1kW toaster, 1.5kW kettle and everything else in the house at the same time.  Nope.  Not gunna fly. And what if its summer and you need to fire your old 5kW AC?  You are going to need a near 10kW While looking these things up I found a really good chart on the average power consumption of home appliances.  I placed it at the end of this post. Check it out.  See just how much power you can be pulling all at once.

Buying against the math

So how many people would invest $5000 on a Powerwall that MIGHT pay for itself in 10 years?  At first, not that many, but more than you might think. Remember, this is a Tesla device, not some ugly box sitting on the ground somewhere.  This device is very well designed, can mount on a wall and thus not take up limited floor space in a garage and smart enabled such that knows when to buy power, how much to store and when to try to sell if it has too much. Remember when Elon first started selling the Tesla roaster?  People thought he was crazy.  Well here we have the same situation. The people who will buy the Powerwall will not be concerned about the ROI, but instead will buy the device because they know they are helping the environment, getting a well-designed and good looking device for the home and, eventually, will pay for itself.  It’s from Tesla so they know it is the cutting edge of technology both physical and cloud technology.  Remember the Nest?  Same thing.  A VERY well designed device that looks good in the home that makes the home more intelligent and efficient.  The Powerwall is not that much different.  There will be enough people buying it that it will do what Elon wants, create demand for more batteries from his gigafactory to drive the price of batteries even lower. Then guess what? As the price goes down, the math gets better.  So in 5-10 years, I can see home battery packs becoming the norm.

Who else will buy the Powerwall now?

Image from http://www.itproportal.com/

Many people will.  A number of utilities and big box corporations have already signed up for the Powerpack.  Amazon, Walmart and Target are already testing the Powerpack in stores across the US.  For larger corporations, where 12-16 year ROI are not a big issue and having reliable uninterrupted power is of value, I can see the Powerpacks gaining acceptance probably from the same customers who bought in to the bloom box.  Remember those?  They were released with what seemed the same hype as the Tesla announcement, but as solar and wind got cheaper, the ROI for chemical power generation make less sense.  But I digress.

There are a number of use cases where people will buy the Powerwall today.  People who live on the edge of the power grid and have experience power loss on occasion.  Those who’s utility prices are far higher then the average, hello again Hawaii, and those who just like the idea of living off the grid. However, a HUGH market may not be in the US.  In India where even the wealthy have to deal with power interruption, may buy these in large numbers. Found this great comment on reddit.

In countries like India, very few cities ever get 24×7 electricity. You can be a millionaire, but still you can not have 24×7 electricity unless you install some sort of an expensive backup system. Almost every middle class and richer family owns a battery or fossil fuel based backup unit for their house and from the smallest business to the largest industry, uninterrupted power supply is always a huge issue.

The existing battery based solutions have many of the issues that Elon Musk pointed out in his announcement. They use old-school batteries (no thermal management, nasty leaky chemicals and toxic fumes). They also need special storage areas and most don’t “just work”. At $3500 for a 10kWh storage, it is a little more expensive than some existing good quality devices, but it really isn’t that much more expensive! Reliability and easy of use are very important and if Tesla can make a reliable and high-quality product which is also scalable enough that even businesses can own, then it will be a huge deal in many parts of the world.

Also if you tie it to other sources like solar, then many remote locations that were never connected can also have some power! (Think of hospitals, internet access stations etc.).

So to sum up, I think there is already a market for a very well designed home battery back up system, and even though the numbers do not work right now, there will be enough demand to get the economies of scale wheel turning fast enough to bring prices down. That it will be more attractive to the average home owner, which in turn will increase demand which in turn will bring prices down even further. And all this does not take into account improvements in battery technology which could accelerate cost reduction and cycle life even further.

Elon did not invent anything really new here, but instead, created a beautiful product, that works well and has a mission.  Somewhat like his cars.  And we know he was proven right on that front.

Following table is from http://www.wholesalesolar.com/solar-information/how-to-save-energy/power-table

* The daily energy values listed here are for the most efficient units in their class and the information was obtained from Consumer Guide to Home and the General Electric website.