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Tesla Powerwall advocates fight proposed ban on in-home lithium ion battery storage systems in Australia

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Battery storage systems are exceedingly popular in Australia, which has some of the highest energy costs in the world. Battery storage systems like the Tesla Powerwall are seen as the answer to high electricity costs when coupled with a rooftop solar installation. There are currently 1.6 million homes in Australia with rooftop solar and the majority of those home owners say they are interested in adding battery storage to help them reduce the amount of electricity they draw from the grid.

On February 13, a report leaked in the Australian press saying that Standards Australia, a non-governmental group similar to Underwriters Laboratories, was about to recommend that any storage devices using lithium ion cells not be installed inside homes but rather in free standing kiosks or bunkers added to the exterior of buildings.

According to Australia’s RenewEconomy, the new standard would add thousands of dollars to the price of a complete solar power system and imperil what is considered to be a multi-billion dollar business opportunity. Bloomberg New Energy Finance believes there could be as many as 6 million residential storage battery installations in Australia in the next 15 years.

The leaked report created a whirlwind of protest. No other country has such restrictions on storage battery installations. John Grimes, head of the Australian Solar Council, says that other countries like Japan and the United States do not have bans on lithium ion storage batteries in homes. He adds that there are already 30,000 such devices in Germany, where lithium ion devices are banned only in sleeping areas.

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Apparently Standards Australia grew concerned when reports surfaced that the Samsung Galaxy Note had a disturbing tendency to burst into flames. That device has now been banned from all commercial aircraft whether in carry on or checked luggage.

The proposed rules could have a devastating effect on a virtual power plant program being promoted by AGL Energy in South Australia. That concept would link up to 1000 home solar systems together with a sophisticated digital control network designed to manage each system remotely and maximize the efficiency of the entire microgrid.

Australia is ripe for solar power development because of the abundance of sunshine it receives every day. In fact, there is already a planned community near Melbourne, Australia that has been dubbed Tesla Town because every house has a rooftop solar system mated to a Tesla Powerwall storage battery. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is one of those Australians who has a 14.5 kW rooftop solar and battery storage system installed at his home.

solar powered community

Suburb dubbed “Tesla town” in Australia will have solar, Tesla’s Powerwall and EV charging in every home.

Some people have expressed concerns that owners of electric cars with lithium ion batteries such as the Tesla Model S and Model X might be prevented from parking their cars in their garages if the Standards Australia rules are adopted.

LG Chem and Tesla are the two leading storage battery suppliers in Australia. Both use lithium ion battery cells, as do the products from Sony, GCL, BYD, Panasonic and Samsung. Companies that offer storage batteries that do not use lithium ion cells include  Sonnenbatterie and Enphase (lithium iron phosphate batteries), Astralia’s Redflow (zinc bromine flow batteries), Ecoult (lead acid batteries), and Aquion, which uses ionically charged water molecules as its storage medium.

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The storm of complaints has forced Standards Australia to rethink its position even before its new rules were officially announced. On February 14, it released a statement denying it is proposing a ban on lithium ion batteries in homes. It said that the public discussion period for its proposed rules would now begin in April instead of later this month and would extend for 9 weeks instead of the usual 6.

“Standards Australia is working with stakeholders to develop a new draft Australian Standard AS/NZS 5139, Electrical Installations –Safety of battery systems for use in inverter energy systems that will enable the safe installation of battery energy storage systems,” the organization said in a statement. “It is proposed that the draft document will contain provisions for:

  • Installation requirements for all battery systems connected to inverter energy systems, covering all battery types
  • Mitigating hazards associated with battery energy storage system installations
  • Classifying batteries based on hazards, and not chemistry type

Those are reasonable and sensible proposals, considering that Australia currently has no national standards governing the installation of residential solar systems, which leaves consumers open to shoddy work by poorly trained contractors. The best defense against charlatans is to let Tesla manage the entire process. It uses only trained, certified installers and stands behind each installation with its reputation for quality and customer service.

Interested in solar? Get a solar cost estimate and find out how much a solar system would cost for your home or business.

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Elon Musk

Why SpaceX just made a $60 billion bet on AI coding ahead of historic IPO

SpaceX has secured an option to acquire Cursor AI for $60 billion ahead of its historic IPO.

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SpaceX announced today it has struck a deal with AI coding startup Cursor, securing the option to acquire the company outright for $60 billion later this year, while committing $10 billion for joint development work in the interim. The announcement described the partnership as building “the world’s best coding and knowledge work AI,” and comes just days after Cursor was separately reported to be raising $2 billion at a valuation above $50 billion.

The move makes strategic sense given where each company currently stands. Cursor currently pays retail prices to Anthropic and OpenAI to the same companies competing directly against it with Claude Code and Codex. That means every dollar of revenue Cursor earns partially funds its own competition. With SpaceX bringing computational infrastructure to the Cursor platform, that could reduce Cursor’s dependence on OpenAI and Anthropic’s Claude AI as its providers. Access to SpaceX’s Colossus supercomputer, with compute equivalent to one million Nvidia H100 chips, gives Cursor the infrastructure to run and train its own models at a scale it could never afford independently. That one change restructures the entire unit economics of the business.

Elon Musk teases crazy outlook for xAI against its competitors

Cursor’s $2 billion in annualized revenue and enterprise reach across more than half of Fortune 500 companies gives SpaceX something its xAI subsidiary currently lacks, which is a proven, fast-growing software business with real enterprise distribution.

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For Cursor, SpaceX’s $10 billion in joint development funding is transformational. Cursor raised $3.3 billion across all of 2025 to reach that $2 billion in revenue. A single $10 billion commitment from SpaceX, even as a development payment rather than an acquisition, dwarfs everything Cursor has raised in its entire existence. That capital accelerates product development, enterprise sales infrastructure, and proprietary model training simultaneously.

The timing is deliberate. SpaceX filed confidentially with the SEC on April 1, 2026, targeting a June listing at a $1.75 trillion valuation, in what would be the largest public offering in history. The company is expected to begin its roadshow the week of June 8, with Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley serving as underwriters. Adding Cursor to the portfolio before that roadshow gives IPO investors a concrete enterprise software revenue story to price in, alongside rockets and satellite internet.

The deal also addresses a weakness that became visible after February’s xAI merger. Several xAI co-founders departed following that acquisition, and SpaceX had already hired two Cursor engineers, signaling where its AI talent strategy was heading. Cursor, for its part, faces a pricing disadvantage competing against Anthropic’s Claude Code.

Whether SpaceX exercises the full acquisition option before its IPO or after remains the open question. Either way, this deal reshapes what investors will be buying into when SpaceX goes public.

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Elon Musk

Tesla Supercharger for Business exposes jaw-dropping ROI gap between best and worst locations

Tesla’s new Supercharger for Business calculator reveals an eye-opening all-in cost and location-based ROI projections.

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tesla v4 supercharger

Tesla has launched an online calculator for its Supercharger for Business program, giving property owners their first transparent look at what it really costs to install Superchargers on site and what kind of return they can expect.

The program itself launched in September 2025, allowing businesses to purchase and operate Supercharger hardware on their own property while Tesla handles installation, maintenance, software, and 24/7 driver support. As Teslarati reported at launch, hosts also get their logo placed on the chargers and their location integrated into Tesla’s in-car navigation, meaning drivers are actively routed there. The stalls are open to all EVs, not just Teslas.


The new online calculator, announced by Tesla on Wednesday with the note that “simplicity and transparency” have been a problem in the industry, lets any business enter a U.S. address and get a real cost and revenue model. A standard 8-stall V4 Supercharger site runs approximately $500,000 in hardware and $55,000 per post for installation, bringing an all-in price just shy of $1 million. Tesla charges a flat $0.10 per kWh fee to cover software, billing, and network operations. Businesses set their own retail price and keep the margin above that fee.

Tesla expands its branded ‘For Business’ Superchargers

 

Taking a look at Tesla’s Supercharger for Business online calculator, we can see that ROI is not uniform, and the gap between a strong location and a poor one can stretch the breakeven point by several years.

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The biggest driver is foot traffic and how long people stay. A busy rest station, hotel, or outlet mall brings in repeat visitors who need to charge while they’re already stopped, pushing utilization numbers higher and shortening payback time.

Tesla Supercharger for Business ROI calculator

Tesla Supercharger for Business ROI calculator

Local electricity rates matter just as much on the cost side. Markets like California carry some of the highest commercial electricity rates in the country, which eats into the margin between what a host pays per kWh and what they charge drivers. At the same time, dense urban areas with high EV adoption tend to support higher retail charging prices, which can offset that cost if demand is strong enough. Weather also plays a role. Cold climates reduce battery efficiency and increase charging frequency, but they can also suppress utilization in winter months if drivers avoid stopping in exposed outdoor locations. Suburban and rural sites face a different problem: lower baseline EV traffic, which means a site with cheaper power and lower operating costs can still take longer to pay back simply because the stalls sit idle more often. Tesla’s calculator uses real fleet data to pre-fill utilization estimates by ZIP code, so businesses can run their specific address against these variables rather than relying on averages.

The program has seen real adoption. Wawa, already the largest host of Tesla Superchargers with over 2,100 stalls across 223 locations, opened its first fully owned and branded site in Alachua, Florida earlier this year. Francis Energy of Oklahoma and the city of Alpharetta, Georgia have also deployed branded stations through the program, as Teslarati covered in January.

Tesla now exceeds 80,000 Supercharger stalls worldwide, and the calculator makes the economic case for accelerating that number through private investment rather than company-owned sites alone.

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Tesla’s newest “Folding V4 Superchargers” are key to its most aggressive expansion yet

Tesla’s folding V4 Supercharger ships 33% more per truck, cuts deployment time and cost significantly.

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Tesla V4 Supercharger installation ramping in Europe

Tesla is rolling out a folding V4 Supercharger design, an engineering change that allows 33% more units to fit on a single delivery truck, cuts deployment time in half, and reduces overall installation cost by roughly 20%.

The folding mechanism addresses one of the least glamorous but most consequential bottlenecks in charging infrastructure: getting hardware from factory floor to job site efficiently. By collapsing the form factor for transit and unfolding into an operational configuration on arrival, the new design dramatically reduces the logistics overhead that has historically slowed Supercharger rollouts, particularly at large or remote sites where multiple units are needed simultaneously.

The timing aligns with a broader acceleration in Tesla’s network strategy. In March 2026, Tesla’s Gigafactory New York produced its final V3 Supercharger cabinet after more than seven years and 15,000 units, pivoting entirely to V4 cabinet production. The V4 cabinet itself is already a generational leap, delivering up to 500 kW per stall for passenger vehicles and up to 1.2 MW for the Tesla Semi, while supporting twice the stalls per cabinet at three times the power density of its predecessor. The folding transport innovation layers logistical efficiency on top of that technical foundation.

Tesla launches first ‘true’ East Coast V4 Supercharger: here’s what that means

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Tesla Charging’s Director Max de Zegher, commenting on the V4 cabinet when it launched, captured the operational philosophy behind these changes: “Posts can peak up to 500kW for cars, but we need less than 1MW across 8 posts to deliver maximum power to cars 99% of the time.” The design philosophy has always been about maximizing real-world throughput, not just peak specs, and the folding transport upgrade extends that thinking into the supply chain itself.

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