Also very important: the cybertruck is not the only vehicle capable of doing that (the keywords are V2H and V2L, V2H is the more convenient — the car just plugs into the mains and acts as a house battery — while V2L means you have to go and plug your stuff to the car's mains outputs directly)

> Most of the disasters I'm aware of people either get their power back in a short enough amount of time that they can use a normal generator for the gap

TBF an EV car has an absolutely massive battery relative to the electric consumption of a house, unless you're using resistive heating all around. Especially if you ration use.

Most people (like me) don't have generators. But when I hear "oh, BTW this car can be a used as a generator for 48-72 hours in a power outage", that's a nice little selling point that might put me over the edge if i'm otherwise considering the car. No, this doesn't solve for Hurricane Katrina. But it does solve for a nor'easter.

First, 'nearby' can be a 1 hr drive and still be worth it to commute every few days. Second, tornadoes, storms, and floods have exactly that pattern where damage can be block by block.

But it is still cheaper to stockpile some generators and gas than stockpile a cybertruck. If there's an EV charging station up within a 1 hr drive, gas stations are also going to be up.

Even if you can’t easily recharge, it’s a great way to power your home for a few days. It’s arguably a very cost-efficient home backup solution, assuming you were already in the market for an EV.

A Cybertruck has nearly 10x the battery capacity of a single Powerwall, and to buy that much Powerwall capacity would cost at least as much as a Cybertruck. Even a Tesla Model 3 (which now supports home backup) is over 5x Powerwalls.

You still have to pay to install home backup support on your home’s breaker (at least $10k), but you don’t need anywhere near the amount of very expensive supplemental home batteries.

Also, even an EV with a 120V outlet and no home backup support could be very useful for recharging a portable battery bank.

I live off grid in Sweden all year round with solar and an EV as battery to power everything except heating which I do with wood from my own property.

I'd have animals too but society is still stable enough to provide me with food.

The whole point of prepping is to prepare for the unlikely events though.

If you can choose between a truck that can’t power your house and a truck that can, prepper mentality is to choose the one that can.

That sort of thing happens all the time. All it takes is, say, a big fallen tree in the wrong spot. Its entirely possible for just your road to be SOL for days, if the local utility is otherwise completely swamped by bigger issues from whatever disaster is going on.

This is one of those things that happens in rural areas, "the city" (which is not actually a city in any sense but the legal one) gets power on in a day or so but your neighborhood 10 miles away doesn't get power for another week because the population density is something like 50/sq mile at most. And that's just for the people in actual neighborhoods, if you're on a farm or something where the nearest neighbor is a mile down the highway I don't even know how long it takes them to fix your power lines.

Living in Ukraine, I can tell you it's not niche here. Most homeowners without power walls already consider buying an EV because you also get to drive it to an area that has electricity at the time.

> This seems like an awfully niche case, no?

Not really. Some areas in California have multiple PSPS outages during fire season. Many people have gotten gas generators or powerwalls to deal with it, but using your EV would be ideal.

>This seems like an awfully niche case, no?

No. It's like a generator except way more power and mobile. Rechargable via solar. So basically just a much better generator.

Greetings from Northern California! Multi-day power outages are not at all uncommon (though I've never seen 14 days). We had one about a month ago. Most people just have generators, but if you wanted to use a Cybertruck instead, the nearest superchargers are one hour away and do not go offline when we lose power.

Not niche at all. Loss of power for days is common in areas of strong storms with above ground power lines. States frequented by hurricanes and strong storms can experience days to weeks without power.

Ford has also marketed their hybrid F150 as being able to power home appliances for several years.

In places like Florida its absolutely something that would not be considered niche.

Yeah... even powerwalls and equivalent don't seem to be a good just-in-case solution. A gas generator costs 5% for the same capacity, and you can just go get some extra gas when the storm comes. I'm all for electrification, but after doing the math, it doesn't work for this particular corner case.

If you're already committed to owning a bigass $100K electric truck this is an inarguably awesome side benefit. It's a truck, so... you have a few hundred miles of range. Slightly better than "down the street."

But for the other 99.99% of humanity, there are certainly more cost-effective ways. A portable power station and solar panels are probably the better move unless you have some really massive power needs.

(Admittedly, a nuclear winter reduces the effectiveness of those solar panels somewhat)

Actually, if my car worked as a whole-house UPS and base smart battery (charging at night when power is cheap, drawing during day when it's expensive), that's a pretty nice value-add for a vehicle purchase.

Doesn't make sense for what they are charging for it. But still!

Other commenters are pointing out places where it isn’t that niche, but I just want to call out that there’s a whole cottage industry for preppers that would eat this up. I would consider a 30-pound bucket full of shelf-stable Mac and cheese “pretty niche,” but it flew off the shelves at Costco.

I'm not sure it is. I've considered getting home batteries for power outages (due to fires), and frankly given the install cost, using a car is compelling. Not only do they have enormous batteries (a model 3 has a 57.5 kwh battery and can be acquired for 20k), but they can be driven to recharge every few days if need be.

Where I'm located, in most cases when there is an outage, neighboring areas do have power.

Specifically for my model 3, I've been considering tapping into the HV system manually to keep my Ecoflow battery topped up, but I wish there was a way to directly connect it.

Well, with climate change and weather getting more extreme, it might happen more often...

Also an american only case. But anyway trucks are not popular elsewhere, little sense to buy it

Niche until it’s life/death unfortunately.

I've got a friend who does it simply to fuck PG&E and avoid an electric bill. He has workplace charging, a Cybertruck, and a powerwall + Tesla solar setup at home. He drives his truck to work, fills up on electricity, drives it home at the end of the day, and uses it to power his house. Repeat the next day. The Cybertruck was cheaper than the 13 PowerWalls or whatever that's the equivalent battery capacity.

My silicon valley neighborhood lost power for two days in 2025 starting on Christmas day.

In what universe is backup power a niche use case?

Actually no, and in fact almost all EVs are capable of powering a house for quite a while. It would be excellent if this was not just a Cybertruck-exclusive feature since here in the bay area we have shitty infrastructure too and power outages happen several times per winter.

Not uncommon in parts of California where certain legs of the grid are shut down for high wind events. If you live in Pacifica, you might have your power out for 3 to 5 days, but there will be reliable power in San Francisco 20 minutes away.

An awful lot Elon’s products seem uniquely capable in extreme niche cases primarily caused by America‘s horrendous track record of maintaining, upgrading, and filling in traditional infrastructure.

Even outside of natural disasters, it's a very useful feature for people in the construction business and similar fields where mains power might not be always available.

I saw it happen during Katrina. Neighborhoods within an easy drive of each other where one had power, and the other not. Not to mention the fact that vehicle charging stations may well be prioritized to restore power.

It’s niche just because natural disasters are thankfully relatively rare, but I still think having good contingencies is worth it.

Fuck being seen in a cybertruck though.

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Cybertruck uses like a fifth of the energy of a full size gas pickup truck and is only like 50% more than a typical smaller sized EV. The truth is that most homes don't use much energy apart from hvac. The Chevy Bolt can also power a home for several days if you only have the fridge and lights running.

Driving is wasteful. Cybertrucks and Prius's use similar amounts of energy per mile. Cybertruck is 0.4-0.5 kWh/mile, the Prius is 0.6-0.7 kWh/mile.

Of course the Prius Prime on electricity is way more efficient than both, but it still uses a lot more energy than a house.

>For daily driving duty, a car or small suv is much more efficient.

I have a lightning and it averages 0.5kwh/mile and my electricity price is $0.15/kwh, so it costs me $0.075/mile to drive. At current gas prices that's pretty much the same as a very efficient hybrid compact car (55mpg @ ~$4/gallon). If I had solar I could probably offset almost all of the lightning fuel cost based on where I live (sunny) but it's so cheap it's not worth it.

Do you mean "much more efficient" in places where electricity rates are significantly higher than the national average? Or only much more efficient when compared to when you're charging at charging stations?

> Another way to view this is that driving a cybertruck every day is quite wasteful (no different than driving a full size gas pickup every day). One recharge cycle in a cybertruck uses enough energy to power a typical home for 8 days, 130kWh.

Driving in general uses a lot of energy. It’s the physically moving a 1,000 kg or more object that takes a lot of energy. Orders of magnitude more than a few lights or a phone. Same with flying of course; also moving a heavy object.

As someone towing every weekend with a Lightning, I get closer to 150mi.

ICE trucks are equally inefficient for towing. People just don't seem to be able to factor it in.

If the underlying energy is coming from a renewable source, then it wouldn't matter all that much, would it?

I own a pretty typical phev sedan (Gen 2. Volt), and I use more electricity on my 20 mile commute than the rest of my power usage combined.

All cars just use a ton of power moving a lot of mass. It is actually impressive, it's like 100KW at full tilt. I think i saw someone do the math for how much power transfer you would need to get EV charging as fast as gasoline refuelling: It's in the megawatts.

The only way you could signifigantly reduce power usage of vehicles is to reduce mass dramaticially with a motorcyle or autocycle. The Aptera is an interesting autocycle design based on this line of reasoning, but we are also seeing the emergence of a lot of electric motorcycles.

In summer time with a pool and AC, we use 100kw in one day

Yeah the Silverado EV has my attention but it's the same issue: if you, like me, actually use your truck for truck shit, an electric truck is a substantial, notable downgrade from ICE.

That said if you have a Mall Crawler who's heaviest loads are your monthly Costco run, an electric truck would probably be great for you. I still wouldn't recommend a Cybertruck though.

Yeah, wasteful, like one day we will ever run out of energy lol

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The caveat is that Powershare is low wattage. You really need to pair it with a Powerwall and have an average draw less than the limited capability of the car to supply it.

To power a house directly from an EV, the main options now are the EV trucks -- Lightning, Silverado, Cybertruck all can have this ability, 240V 30A typically

I have a Tesla Y. It has almost a week of power sitting in it on full charge. There's no hookup. The only power outlet is usb-c pd.

Completely missed opportunity. I won't be buying an electric vehicle that doesn't allow powering my house, ever again.

No association, but something like this is "the right answer", IMHO: https://www.cargenerator.com/pages/use-your-car-as-a-backup-...

1) if you're permanently modifying your home or electric panel you're over $1k. (General Motors "Vehicle2House" is ~$10-20k for hardware + installation... an EXTREME investment unless you plan on regular "emergency" usage of it)

2) if you're buying some portable solar panel "battery boom box" you'll likely run out and the folding solar panel it comes with is more gimmick than reliable

3) if you're buying a "real" gas/diesel generator, you have to run it + change the oil every 6 months otherwise it might not start in your emergency situation

...just buy a thing that clips to your car battery and dangles out the front hood of your car!

You already maintain your car every 3-9 months, you already (should) have at least 1/2 tank of gas at all times (especially in a weather / outage situation), you can generally idle your car for at least 2 days off a tank of gas in an emergency, and if this thing can charge your phone/battery packs, keep your fridge running (kindof?), and run a small space heater overnight...

It makes soooo much more sense to buy a $500-$1000 emergency accessory that piggybacks off the car you already maintain than trying to stand up a whole extra distribution mechanism for "survival-ish power, maybe 1-2 times over 3-4 years".

I don't think the residential power generator is needed anymore if you have an electric car.

As soon as we got the adapter for our Ioniq 5, I sold generator to a neighbor. The car will run what we need for four days, which is longer than the generator and five gallon can of gas is going to last.

If you have an electric car that supports V2H.

Despite the dealer saying the used one I bought supported it, it turned out to not be available in the trim I got. My fault obviously for believing something a car dealer said.

I would definitely be carrying a battery pack or two if going on a rural motorbike trip.

Charging a truck does that? What's that campground going to do with someone plugs in their 50A 43 foot-long tour bus RV?

(I'm sure there's more to the story, and the details aren't important, but if charging a vehicle is tripping breakers for the whole campground there's something wrong.)

If pulling 24 amps through a TT-30 or 40 amps through a 14-50 trips a breaker, then it's the host's fault for the campground having a shoddy electrical system, not the truck driver's fault.

I’ve looked at solar so many times and I’d love to get it…I just can’t make the math work based on the quotes I always end up getting.

Yea, I hate that the Lightning didn’t work out. I loved the vehicle when I test drove it. I just couldn’t justify the price for the range.

But can they also be driven?

This is obviously not the primary reason to get a Telsa. But a full home generator will run you $15k to buy and install where i live, and a whole bunch of hassle to install with permits. I don't have one because my power doesn't go out that much. But if i'm otherwise on the fence about a vehicle, I would absolutely want this as a feature.

In our area, when a storm hit, the roads washed out, so the generators ran out of propane. Then the local propane companies ran out of delivery truck capacity because of the demand surge. Finally, the regional distributors ran out of propane.

Our solar panels kept the fridge running, but we were heating the house with a wood stove (it was very cloudy, so we were getting maybe an hour of sun a day). If we had bidirectional house charging, we could have had warm showers + used the heat pump: We would have been able to fast-charge the car at 100-200kw in town. The house can limp through 20-30 hours on ~ 25kwh, so the charger would charge the house at a few days per hour, including losses from driving to and from town + round tripping through the battery, and also running the house heat pump.

None of the other people around here stayed online. Some propane-dependent people had no electricity for > 2 weeks (with rationing, they managed to keep their generators online for about a week, and PG&E took three weeks to fix their lines).

This was in the outskirts of Silicon Valley, so better-than-puerto-rico infrastructure, but only just.

You forgot "higher maintenance" that goes along with seldom-used things that run on gas. That gas doesn't drain itself, and if you don't do that, well, Amazon has carbs for Honda generators for $30. For something I might use once a year. No, thanks.

The ford home integration setup never really worked as advertised. The idea is that if the home power fails, the truck will output high voltage DC to an inverter that powers the house. No owners have got this failing over reliably.

Most people just plug an extension cord into the onboard inverter. You have to manually flip it on and plug it in, but 240V30A is plenty for an emergency. Doing it this way isn't any different from any other vehicle with an onboard inverter though.

No one is saying they can’t. Drop the whataboutism, please.

Do they now?

Yeah, I don't know if I like the look, but I'm glad to see something that's at least different.

In theory, yes, but they need to have the hardware/firmware to do it. Pretty sure most of the full-size electric trucks do so, but not sure about any of the smaller crossover EVs.

You also need to have the house setup to run off a generator. You don't want the truck power feeding back into the grid. IIRC, that's usually done with a big switch near the main panel.

No, you can't even do it with most other Teslas. Current models will give you 20A of 120V out from the battery, but most don't have an inverter big enough.

There is a model of Ford Lightning that has power sharing and now that resale values are way down it just might be a cost effective home battery that you can drive around during non-emergencies....

Sort of. With my Kia EV9 I can use a V2L adapter to run an extension cord for essential items in my home. I understand in other markets there is a V2H connector so you can connect it to your home mains power but I don’t think it’s available in the US

In theory, it requires ONLY firmware changes. V2G/V2H works by establishing a "fast charging session" that directly connects the inverter to the high-voltage bus. And then it just siphons off the energy from the battery instead of charging it.

Car makers are reluctant to support this. In case of Tesla because of market segmentation.

Vehicle to Home(V2H) is unfortunately not super common, but it is being added to a lot of newer models this year and beyond.

High. They typically need heavy power lines that are either underground or way up overhead.

What you are missing is home batteries have INSANE markups.

5kWh of battery cells at the moment run around $500. The rest of the cost of production is in the power electronics (probably around another $500).

It's why you can buy 4kwh worth of battery backups from Amazon for about $2k right now. Yet the same thing sold as a home battery backup costs $5k.

Lack of competition and likely low amount of sells is what's causing the margins to be so high.

Permitting in California more than doubles the installation cost of home batteries + PG&E gets to screw with you if you buy one.

Propane generators here have the same problem.

That still doesn't explain the price gap. You can literally just get a V2H EV and use it instead of a home battery (or, you could if the ecosystem was more mature).

Good question - different markets with different margins and supply chains?

The answer is mostly that the powerwall is an incredibly overpriced home battery.

They want ~9k for a freaking 13.5kwh pack.

I can buy a UL certified, 16kwh, outdoor rated pack for 3.5k (ex - EG4 allweather)

I can buy just the LFP batteries themselves for the new powerwall 3 LFP version (no BMS, no shell, no certification) for $1116... https://18650battery.com/products/byd-302ah-3-2v-lifepo4-pri...

Powerwall is a scammy product. WAY too expensive for the storage it provides.

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So the summary is: Cybertruck is using a different battery chemistry, Powerwall is a scam.

(I mean - to be clear, the Cybertruck is also a scam, but it's a different kind of scam not directly related to the battery capacity, since it's hauling around a 123kWh NCMA battery pack)

I just checked and prices are going to have to come way down. Who is buying a 2024 Cybertruck for $70k+?

Recycling them to make saucepans from the stainless steel would give them a more practical afterlife then when they were a truck.

Not bad. The shell would also make a nice BBQ.