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.
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:
- 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.
Elon Musk
The FCC just said ‘No’ to SpaceX for now
SpaceX is fighting the FCC for spectrum that could put satellites inside every smartphone.
SpaceX was dealt a new setback on April 23, 2006 by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) after the U.S. government agency dismissed the company’s petition to access a Mobile Satellite Service spectrum that would allow direct-to-device (D2D) capabilities.
The FCC regulates communications by radio, television, wire, and cable, which also includes regulating D2D technology that lets your existing smartphone connect directly to a satellite orbiting Earth, the same way it would connect to a cell tower.
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has been building toward this through its Starlink Mobile service, formerly called Direct-to-Cell, in partnership with T-Mobile. The service officially launched on July 23, 2025, starting with messaging and expanding to broadband data in October of that year.
T-Mobile Starlink Pricing Announced – Early Adopters Get Exclusive Discount
It’s worth noting that SpaceX is not alone in this race. AT&T and Verizon have their own satellite texting deals with AST SpaceMobile, while Verizon separately offers free satellite texting through Skylo on newer phones.
The regulatory foundation for all of this dates to March 14, 2024, when the FCC adopted the world’s first framework for what it called Supplemental Coverage from Space, allowing satellite operators to lease spectrum from terrestrial carriers and fill gaps in their coverage. On November 26, 2024, the FCC granted SpaceX the first-ever authorization under that framework, approving its partnership with T-Mobile to provide service in specific frequency bands. SpaceX then went further, completing a roughly $17 billion acquisition of wireless spectrum from EchoStar, which gave it the ability to negotiate with global carriers more independently.
Starlink’s EchoStar spectrum deal could bring 5G coverage anywhere
This recent ruling by the FCC blocked SpaceX from going further, protecting incumbent spectrum holders like Globalstar and Iridium. But the market momentum is already in motion. As Teslarati reported, SpaceX is targeting peak speeds of 150 Mbps per user for its next generation Direct-to-Cell service, compared to roughly 4 Mbps today, which would bring satellite connectivity close to standard carrier performance.
With a reported IPO targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation on the horizon, each spectrum fight, carrier deal, and regulatory win or loss now carries weight beyond just connectivity. SpaceX is quietly becoming the infrastructure layer underneath the phones of millions of people, and the FCC’s next move will help determine how much further that reach extends.
FCC Satellite Rule Makings can be found here.
Elon Musk
Elon Musk talks Tesla Roadster’s future
Elon Musk confirmed the Roadster as Tesla’s last manually driven car, with a debut coming soon.
During Tesla’s Q1 2026 earnings call on April 22, Elon Musk made a brief but notable comment about the long-awaited next generation Roadster while describing Tesla’s future vehicle lineup. “Long term, the only manually driven car will be the new Tesla Roadster,” he said. “Speaking of which, we may be able to debut that in a month or so. It requires a lot of testing and validation before we can actually have a demo and not have something go wrong with the demo.”
That single statement is the entire Roadster update from yesterday’s call, and while it represents another timeline shift, it comes as no surprise with Tesla heads-down-at-work on the mass rollout of its Robotaxi service across US cities, and the industrial scale production of the humanoid Optimus.
The fact that Musk specifically framed the Roadster as the last manually driven Tesla is significant on its own. As the rest of the lineup moves toward full autonomy, the Roadster becomes something rare in the Tesla-sphere by keeping the driver in control. Driving enthusiasts who buy a $200,000 supercar are not doing so to be passengers. They want the physical connection to the road, the feel of acceleration under their own input, and the experience of controlling something with that level of performance. FSD, however capable it becomes, removes that entirely. The Roadster signals that Tesla understands this distinction and is building a car specifically for the people who consider driving itself the point.
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
The specs for the Roadster Musk has teased over the years are genuinely unlike anything in production. The base model targets 0 to 60 mph in 1.9 seconds, a top speed above 250 mph, and up to 620 miles of range from a 200 kWh battery. The optional SpaceX package takes it further, rumored to add roughly ten cold gas thrusters operating at 10,000 psi, borrowed directly from Falcon 9 rocket technology. With thrusters, Musk has claimed 0 to 60 mph in as little as 1.1 seconds. In a 2021 Joe Rogan interview he went further, stating “I want it to hover. We got to figure out how to make it hover without killing people.” Tesla filed a patent for ground effect technology in August 2025, suggesting the hover concept has not been abandoned. The starting price remains $200,000, with the Founders Series requiring a $250,000 full deposit. Some reservation holders placed those deposits in 2017 and are approaching a full decade of waiting.
With production now targeted for 2027 or 2028 at the earliest, the Roadster remains Tesla’s most audacious promise and its longest-running delay. But if what Musk is testing lives up to even half of what he has described, the demo alone should be worth waiting for.
Elon Musk says the Tesla Roadster unveiling could be done “maybe in a month or so.”
He said it should be an extraordinary unveiling event. pic.twitter.com/6V9P7zmvEm
— TESLARATI (@Teslarati) April 22, 2026
Elon Musk
Tesla isn’t joking about building Optimus at an industrial scale: Here we go
Tesla’s Optimus factory in Texas targets 10 million robots yearly, with 5.2 million square feet under construction.
Tesla’s Q1 2026 Update Letter, released today, confirms that first generation Optimus production lines are now well underway at its Fremont, California factory, with a pilot line targeting one million robots per year to start. Of bigger note is a shared aerial image of a large piece of land adjacent to Gigafactory Texas, that Tesla has prominently labeled “Optimus factory site preparation.”
Permit documents show Tesla is seeking to add over 5.2 million square feet of new building space to the Giga Texas North Campus by the end of 2026, at an estimated construction investment of $5 billion to $10 billion. The longer term production target for that facility is 10 million Optimus units per year. Giga Texas already sits on 2,500 acres with over 10 million square feet of existing factory floor, and the North Campus expansion is being built to support multiple projects, including the dedicated Optimus factory, the Terafab chip fabrication facility (a joint Tesla/SpaceX/xAI venture), a Cybercab test track, road infrastructure, and supporting facilities.
Credit: TESLA
Texas makes strategic sense beyond the existing infrastructure. The state’s tax structure, lower labor costs relative to California, and the proximity to Tesla’s AI training cluster Cortex 1 and 2, both located at Giga Texas and now totaling over 230,000 H100 equivalent GPUs, means the Optimus software stack and the factory producing the hardware will share the same campus. Tesla’s Q1 report also confirmed completion of the AI5 chip tape out in April, the inference processor designed specifically to power Optimus units in the field.
As Teslarati reported, the Texas facility is intended to house Optimus V4 production at full scale. Musk told the World Economic Forum in January that Tesla plans to sell Optimus to the public by end of 2027 at a price between $20,000 and $30,000, stating, “I think everyone on earth is going to have one and want one.” He has previously pegged long term demand for general purpose humanoid robots at over 20 billion units globally, citing both consumer and industrial use cases.
Tesla expands Robotaxi in a way that was long anticipated
UPDATE: SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy that launched a Tesla into space is back on a mission
