Affect like how? As of today they're useless, except for Tesla who's motivating car automakers to go towards autonomous cars - but they had the tech before.

Tesla's energy storage enables people to use solar energy at night, without the process being a big hassle. If it gets cheap enough, it will make solar power competitive with fossil power in most scenarios. Currently, the battery installations are a cost-competitive alternative to fossil ways of covering peak load. Calling it useless is probably a stretch.

Ditto with Tesla's cars; they aren't a drop-in replacement for gasoline cars in all scenarios but I've heard more than one Tesla owner say that they will never buy a gas-powered car again. So obviously that implies greater utility for the person in question than any current gas-powered car.

Are Tesla's energy storage solutions available anywhere outside their vehicles?

Yes. Tesla Powerwall, a home battery.

https://www.tesla.com/powerwall

I don't think those are planned to ship until 2018.

"During the first quarter of 2016, Tesla delivered over 25 MWh of energy storage to customers on four continents. Over 2,500 Powerwalls and nearly 100 Powerpacks were delivered in North America, Asia, Europe, and Africa.[33]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_Powerwall

I don't know if those were still pilot program devices or if they've hit some level of regular production. 2500 units is still a good start.

So what happens to the batteries when they go bad or old?

Yes, likely you'd need to get all-new batteries every 10 years[1] or so. (And likely recycle the old ones.)

The good news is that batteries are getting about 8% more efficient every year (price per kwh) [2]. So 10 years from now batteries will be 1.08^10 = ~2.15x as efficient [3].

So when you replace them, they'll cost half as much for the same amount of energy storage (and probably half the space too). It's basically Moore's law for batteries except slower.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/powerwall

[2] https://cleantechnica.com/2015/03/26/ev-battery-costs-alread...

[3] or is it 1/(.92^10)? That would be 2.3x

You're kind of right. Let's say they find the right uses for existing tech that's not being used as it should.

He is quite correct that societies can go backwards. There are many scenarios in which we would have 'the tech' and then end up abandoning and losing it. One simple example would be if one corporation profited more by wrecking 'the tech' of another and blocking its adoption, than the other could profit by furthering it. When it all comes down to money you get those suboptimal outcomes, and in the end somebody cashed in epically, but things were not made.

I'm pleased Elon gets this, but it's a chilling thought. We don't have to have MORE stuff, internets, communications etc. just because of Moore's Law, just because it's possible. We can also have progressively less because it's in someone's interest for it to be less.

Yes. Example: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Motors_streetcar_con...

>except for Tesla who's motivating car automakers to go towards autonomous cars - but they had the tech before.

This is enough, no?

The same with Space-X...

I find this false. Tesla is mainly a electric car company, not an autonomous car company. Other companies have the same class of capabilities in the market, it's just that Tesla has the good will of the people. I like Tesla, but calling it an autonomous car company is ridiculous.

I suppose I should have wrote "will affect". If we end up colonizing Mars, or even getting one person to land on Mars, I think Space X will have been involved in creating competition in the aerospace industry at the least.

My point was that his ideas are ones that have potential for huge amounts of change. Whether or not we will see that change is another matter.

SpaceX could also end up having a huge effect on the availability and affordability of high speed internet access.