An Example of How Distributed Resources Create Resilience

A club-member received this text message from a friend who lives in Stuart, FL, a city on the eastern coast of the state where Hurricane Milton came through as a category 1 storm after spawning tornadoes. It is a good illustration of how EVs and distributed energy resources can contribute to resilience.

“Thanks for checking in.  Our home is fine…survived beautifully….never lost power thanks to Tesla Powerwalls.   The rest of the community and county had some major power issues.   Tornado touched down about 3 blocks away, no injuries, just more  power outages in the area. Also, some trees down and turned over a semi-truck.  Hospital (family run Vet hospital) lost power around midnight, but I powered it from the Cybertruck until the power came back around 2pm this afternoon.   At home, we had trimmed all the trees earlier this week,  so only a few branches down.  That’s about it.   Nothing like North Carolina.”

Club president Bruce Becker was invited by Tesla to attend the Cybertruck reveal.

The event took place on Nov. 21 at 9:00 PM Pacific Time. The early reviews of the design have been somewhat divided. Elon Musk, himself, described it as “pointy.” It has a distinctively high-tech, angular, military look.

The vehicle is certainly capable. The top trim level will travel over 500 miles on a single charge. Tesla showed videos of the vehicle towing a Ford F-150 and beating a Porsche 911 in a drag race. Musk invited an employee to sledgehammer the vehicle and he was unable to dent the stainless steel exoskeleton. The windows were less successful with their torture test. As Musk said, “Room for improvement.”

Tesla is taking reservations now. A refundable $100 deposit is required. Production of the vehicle is scheduled for 2021. This post is being written two days after the reveal and there is a report in TechCrunch that Tesla has taken 146,000 reservations, which would translate to about $8 billion worth of orders if all are delivered.

These are photos of Becker at the event, held near the Tesla Design Center in Los Angeles.