Elon Musk confirmed that Tesla currently has a Powerwall backlog of 80,000 orders, which is worth over $500 million, but it can’t ramp up production to meet that due to the global chip shortage.
Tesla has been production constrained with the Powerwall for a long time.
The demand has been strong in several markets, like the US and Australia, but production hasn’t been to catch up despite significant ramp-ups.
As we recently reported, it took Tesla about five years to deploy the first 100,000 Powerwalls, and then, it deployed 100,000 more home battery packs over the last year alone.
It shows a massive ramp-up in production and installations, but now, CEO Elon Musk says that Tesla still has a backlog of 80,000 Powerwall orders.
The CEO made the comment during his trial in Delaware yesterday as he is being sued by some Tesla shareholders over the acquisition of SolarCity, which they see as Musk using Tesla to bail out another company that he controls.
Musk finds himself having to explain the logic behind combining the two businesses and the integration of Tesla’s Powerwall into SolarCity’s residential solar offering is one of the best examples of synergy between the two companies.
During his testimony, the CEO reportedly revealed that Tesla currently has about 80,000 Powerwalls on order, but he believes that Tesla can produce only between 30,000 to 35,000 this quarter due to supply chain issues (via CNBC):
“Tesla CEO Elon Musk revealed in court on Monday that demand for Tesla Powerwalls stands around 80,000 units, but the company won’t be able to make even half of that many this quarter. In the “best case,” Musk said, Tesla will produce 30,000 to 35,000 of its home backup batteries in the current quarter. He blamed the expected shortfall on chip shortages.”
To be fair, the deployment of 30,000 Powerwalls this quarter would still be quite significant since we would be talking about over 400 MWh of energy capacity.
Last quarter, Tesla disclosed 445 MWh of energy storage capacity deployed, but that number also includes Powerpacks and Megapacks, which are believed to account for most of the capacity.
Recently, Musk also announced that Tesla is stopping the deployment of Powerall battery packs on their own.
Instead, Powerwalls will have to be deployed with solar power systems.
Tesla also recently announced the Powerwall 2+, which comes with a higher power output. The company has talked about ramping up production with the new version of the Powerwall.
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