Lifestyle
Tesla is going to light solar on fire
Here we go again!
AC verses DC, much like Mac verses PC, is a tale as old as time. Battles fought, but the war never won. We use both everyday depending on the use and application. Each current has its place.
Energy is a pretty hot topic these days and solar is poised to become the next great battleground for the Current War. Much like it has always been, most people spend little time thinking about electrical currents. They plug something into something else and it typically just works. EV and solar aficionados on the other hand are keenly aware of the difference.
Here is a general and very basic reminder of the difference between the two currents: Typical solar panels, by their nature, have a direct current (DC) output. Household circuits and electric utility service lines use alternating current (AC). An inverter converts DC from a solar panel into household AC. String inverters handle the current conversion for a group of panels, while micro-inverters convert the current for each individual panel. Some panel manufacturers offer micro-inverters mounted on each panels and designate them as AC panels. In general, these two configurations have similar efficiency but offer unique sets of benefits for how they are used, installed, and maintained. It is important to note that each time current is converted to AC from DC and vice verse, there are losses in efficiency.
Batteries for solar arrays are similar to the panels in the sense that they are also DC by nature. These too need an inverter to get from DC to AC. There are even some that are packaged with built-in charger/inverters and marketed as “AC batteries”.
It is widely accepted that batteries are integral to the viability of solar as sustainable energy solution. Additionally, the best place for solar arrays are at their point of use, i.e. homes, office buildings, and garages. Battery storage is the key component for bridging the gap of time between energy production and use.
In a residential application the Current War is a matter of how far DC should be carried into a home, when and where it should be converted, and how many times it needs converted.
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As a challenge for manufacturers and system designers, every system configuration needs to be unique to the user’s needs and goals. Some solar manufacturers have addressed the different complexities by converting everything to AC as quickly as possible. This makes a system very easy to configure, install, and expand. Each panel has a micro-inverter that essentially ties into a household AC system directly. “AC batteries” compliment this system by also tying into the house AC system directly. The generation and storage can both be easily scaled up or down based on a user’s needs. Working with AC is considered safer than with DC, which add to the reasons for why this method is appealing. The downside comes from converting current twice between the panels and the batteries, resulting in a slight reduction in efficiency.
Ironically, Tesla is expected to make a big push for a very DC-focused system, integrating a bunch of functions and elements. Nikola Tesla might be turning in his grave. Their goal is to limit the current conversion to a single point at the most downstream point possible, immediately before entering the household AC system.
Everything but the motor and onboard charger in a Tesla vehicle uses DC. Supercharging is achieved through DC and bypassing the onboard charger. The Tesla Powerwall is DC. Solar panel output is DC. It’s pretty obvious why Tesla is growing it’s DC ecosystem.
Energy generation and storage stay on the same side of the inverter. Additionally, Tesla is expected to switch another element to the DC side; the vehicle wall charger. Removing the current conversion bottlenecks will enable the vehicle to charge directly from the DC home battery to the car’s DC battery. I like to think of it as a dam exploding and releasing it’s reservoir of electrons, turning a trickling stream into a raging river!
Speculation is also swirling around the idea of vehicle-to-grid power. This would open a whole new realm of possibilities. It’s hard to say what use Tesla will make of this technology, but it could be possible to use your Tesla vehicle battery to power your home if the grid fails, or even send energy back to grid during demand spikes.
For comparison, lets look at how an AC-focused system would compare to a DC-focused system in everyday use for a house with a Tesla vehicle from the vantage of an electron (keep in mind that these two examples hardly represent the entire spectrum):
Current Conversion Points:
AC:
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- Solar panel generates DC current
- Unused mid-day Solar DC current converted to household AC at the panel
- Household AC converted to DC at the house battery as excess storage
- House battery DC converted back to household AC at night to charge your vehicle
- Household AC converted to DC in the vehicles onboard charger and sent to vehicle battery
DC:
- Solar panel generates DC current. Unused mid-day solar DC sent to house battery as excess storage. Then the same current flows from your house battery to your car battery.
Zero conversions in the DC ecosystem compared to four conversions in the AC ecosystem. No loss of efficiency. No bottlenecks. Pretty slick, right?
Yeah, I didn’t address what happens when your DC house battery is low and you draw from the grid and need an AC to DC conversion. Tesla is expected to seamlessly integrate this capability into their system. One conversion is still better than four.
Both systems will have their share of advocates, and neither of them should be seen as universally ‘wrong’. It comes down to which configuration would best suit the needs and goals of its user. One major comparison between the two systems is the number of components and the likelihood of complete system failure should one single component stop working.
With an AC system, you have a lot of conversion points, but they are fairly independent. If one fails, the rest still work and your system can still function.
With a DC system, you may have one single inverter. If it fails, your entire system fails.
With varying degrees of grid reliability or “prepper” mindfulness, the spectrum of system variations can address every need. The Tesla DC ecosystem will be best used by Tesla vehicle owners. The list of which is about to explode. Not unlike that electron dam.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s driverless Cybercab just passed a big test with State Governor
Florida’s governor rode Tesla’s Cybercab at a closed test track and called the experience impressive.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rode in a Tesla Cybercab on a closed test track this week and came away impressed, posting on X that the vehicle “successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.” He called the ride “impressive.”
The stop was part of a broader event Monday at SunTrax, a 775 acre state owned proving ground in Auburndale that Florida built specifically to test autonomous and connected vehicles before they reach public roads. Standing next to a gold Cybercab, DeSantis described the car in plain terms: “You go in there and you just sit. You have a screen. There’s no steering wheel, no pedals. Clearly these things could be very beneficial.”
We took a ride on a robotaxi on the Suntrax course and it successfully navigated all hazards — a kid running into the street, a crash with police stopping traffic, a Model S cutting us off, etc.
Impressive! https://t.co/FVAkzFLz3r
— Ron DeSantis (@RonDeSantis) August 11, 2026
DeSantis paired the praise with a caveat that has followed autonomous vehicles since the category existed. “You don’t want to be in an autonomous vehicle and it drives you into a ditch. That would not be good,” he said, framing safety validation as the gate before wider deployment.
SunTrax, the 2.25 mile oval which the state calls the only high speed autonomous vehicle test track in the Southeast, can simulate rain, pedestrian crossings, hills and crowded urban conditions at highway speeds, letting companies push a car past what an early public rollout would risk. Tesla, Waymo and Beep all use the facility, and Florida’s regulatory approach, among the most permissive for autonomous vehicles in the country, doesn’t require a human operator inside a fully autonomous car.
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Tesla has reason to want the blessing of Florida and states beyond, as the Cybercab entered volume production at Gigafactory Texas this spring and has since self certified as SAE Level 4 under Texas law. Public road testing so far has kept a safety monitor in the passenger seat, and Florida is where Tesla has been expanding its existing Model Y based Robotaxi service instead, adding Miami in July and then Orlando and Tampa two weeks later. A closed track endorsement from a sitting governor doesn’t change any of that, but it does put Tesla’s newest hardware in front of a state that has already shown it will move fast on rules.
Elon Musk
The real reason Elon Musk wants every car connected to space
Elon Musk says all cars will eventually need Starlink to handle massive AI bandwidth demand.
Elon Musk is making the case that satellite internet, not fiber or cellular towers, will end up wired into every car on the road. In a string of posts on X, the SpaceX CEO wrote that all cars will have Starlink in the future and called satellite connectivity the only way to get super high bandwidth to billions of vehicles.
The posts started with Musk endorsing a Cloudflare forecast that traffic generated by autonomous AI agents will soon dwarf traffic generated by humans browsing the internet, a shift he described as not a close call at all. From there he narrowed the argument to infrastructure, writing that the only system that can support the insanely fast bandwidth growth needed by AI is Starlink, before extending the logic to cars specifically.
AI agentic Internet traffic will obviously VASTLY exceed human usage. Not a close call at all.
Cloudflare’s forecast is accurate. https://t.co/VztgrinN5k pic.twitter.com/Wo4FiRKjPU
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 9, 2026
The timing lines up with Tesla’s own hardware decisions. On July 20, Tesla confirmed the Cybercab would ship with a Starlink V5 terminal built into its roof, the first time the company had put satellite hardware in a production vehicle. A day later, Tesla’s head of AI, Ashok Elluswamy, explained the connection wasn’t there for safety and that Cybercab’s driving stack runs entirely on onboard cameras and compute, while the satellite link exists for navigation, customer service, and fleet management instead. Musk followed with his own post about the feature, saying riders would be able to watch 4K streaming video during rides.
By July 22, Musk had already said Starlink would extend beyond Cybercab to Tesla’s full lineup. Sunday’s posts push that same logic outward again, this time framed as a requirement across the industry rather than a feature specific to Tesla, and tied directly to the bandwidth AI systems are expected to consume.
SpaceX’s newest Starmind will make earth data centers obsolete
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The AI argument has been building on SpaceX’s side for months. The company has an FCC filing pending for a third generation Starlink constellation, and it has separately proposed Starmind, a constellation of up to a million satellites designed to run AI computation directly in orbit rather than just relay data. Musk has said he expects space to become the cheapest place to deploy AI compute within two to three years. Starlink and Starmind serve different jobs inside that vision, one moving data and the other processing it, but Sunday’s posts treat vehicles as one more category of hardware that will eventually need both.
None of this changes anything for Tesla owners today. Cars already on the road keep running on LTE and Wi-Fi, and Tesla hasn’t outlined a retrofit path for existing vehicles. The July 22 commitment applies to future production, not the fleet already delivered. What Musk added on Sunday is the reasoning: satellite connectivity isn’t a Cybercab novelty, it’s a bet that ground based networks won’t keep up with how much data cars, robots, and AI systems are about to generate.
Elon Musk
The Boring Company’s newest tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla parts and no one is driving it
The Boring Company’s new tunnel vehicle runs on Tesla Model 3 batteries and drive units.
The Boring Company just introduced a new piece of hardware, and it runs on parts pulled straight from a Tesla showroom. Liner Truck 3, unveiled in a post from the tunneling company’s official X account, is an all electric vehicle built around Tesla Model 3 battery packs and drive units, purpose built to move concrete tunnel segments to the boring machine face without a single person underground.
Introducing Liner Truck 3 — our latest fully electric tunnel vehicle.
– Tesla Model 3 battery and drive units
– Transports 22,000+ lb of concrete segments to the boring machine
– 28 miles of range
– 12 mph max operating speed
– Remotely piloted from Global OCC in Texas, with… pic.twitter.com/XB7FgSXnpy— The Boring Company (@boringcompany) August 7, 2026
The job itself is unglamorous but critical. Each precast segment run weighs more than 22,000 pounds, roughly the load of a full cement mixer, and Liner Truck 3 hauls that weight repeatedly between the surface staging area and wherever the Prufrock machine happens to be cutting.
The Boring Company said Liner Truck 3 is piloted remotely out of its Global Operations Control Center in Texas, extending the Zero-People-In-Tunnel approach the company has spent years building toward. An earlier version of a ZPIT liner truck was already tested at the company’s Bastrop, Texas research tunnels, and a factory tour released last month showed an employee flying a fully loaded liner truck with a PlayStation controller. Liner Truck 3 looks like the production version of that same idea, cleaned up and pushed into daily use.
The timing lines up with a company digging in more places than it ever has before. The Boring Company now has multiple Prufrock machines active or arriving in Nashville, where Music City Loop construction has been accelerating since February, and its Vegas Loop network keeps adding tunnel mileage on a near monthly basis. Every one of those projects depends on getting concrete segments to the cutting face fast enough to keep the boring machine from idling, which is exactly the bottleneck Liner Truck 3 is designed to remove.
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It also reinforces something Tesla owners have watched happen gradually across Musk’s companies: passenger car hardware finding a second life in heavy equipment. Model 3 drive units already move people through the Vegas Loop, and now the same components are hauling concrete underground in Nashville and wherever The Boring Company digs next. Whether that kind of component reuse extends further into TBC’s equipment lineup, or into other Musk owned industrial hardware, is the next thing worth watching.
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