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The Tesla Motor Company is doing right by the name of its namesake, a century after his work was in full blossom.  

The history and facts of the great Nikola Tesla's life have been curiously ignored by popular thinking.  One major thing we ought to recognize is that he was in favor of FREE ELECTRICITY for everyone, and devoted much time, talent and treasure to its development.  Some believe he solved the riddle but was suppressed.  

Why would he have been suppressed?  What's wrong with free electricity?  

Anyway, in case anyone really wants to see firsthand what's up with Telsa cars, I HIGHLY recommend dropping in to a Tesla Motors showroom one fine day and have a nice chat with the floor salesperson.  You'll come away with a whole new outlook on technology.

My first impression was that the cars are WAY too simple.  Where's all the smog controls?  Where's all the hoses and gadgets and doo-dads under the hood?  Why is there so much r-o-o-m in the engine  -- I mean, motor  compartment?

If my suspicion's correct, the R&D at Telsa is replete with rare earth magnets and contraptions built using them, such that this "whole house battery" is merely a stepping stone toward opening the market to self-generating electricity in the home.

Stay tuned!

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My guess is that the energy returned is less than the total energy invested.  It might eliminate some inefficiencies in the current energy distribution system and thereby extend the availability of fossil fuels slightly longer.  Nevertheless, the age of super-efficient fuel sources like oil and natural gas will be over before the end of this century.  There are few things that could prevent this from happening.  One is the discovery of a massive oil or natural gas deposit of unprecedented magnitude.  Another would be the total destruction of several very large oil consumer markets, like China and India.  Finally, fossil fuels could become irrelevant due to some other thing causing systemic collapse of trade networks and infrastructure.

Barring these events, however, oil and natural gas depletion are assured before the end of this century.

And I guarantee that Elon Musk's batteries have an energy return to energy investment ratio of less than 1.

So how are these batteries powered?

Neil, self-generating electricity? What is that? How can electricity generate itself?

We lived off-grid for approximately 13 years, using  deep cycle batteries and inverter. We were harnessing the sun. Mind you, we didn't use many electrical appliances.