![\"Tesla](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/price-increase-pw2.jpg\")
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If you’re an Australian hoping to buy a Tesla Powerwall battery system, I have bad news.\u00a0 It’s so bad that before I reveal it, you may want to sit down and prepare to offer words of comfort to your wallet.\u00a0 The Australian Tesla site has just increased the price of Powerwalls by $800.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n
To be clear, this isn’t me repeating news about Tesla’s previous $800 price hike<\/a> I wrote about less than three months ago because I have memory problems.\u00a0 This is completely unrelated to my impending senility.\u00a0 It’s an entirely new price increase.\u00a0 The cost of a Tesla Powerwall<\/a> and supporting hardware — including GST — is now $13,300:<\/p>\r\n The Tesla Powerwall price currently given on their Australian site.\u00a0 I’m responsible for putting the red line under the new, higher price.\u00a0 As it says, this is without installation.\u00a0 To get a Powerwall installed now may cost you around $17,000.<\/p><\/div>\r\n At this rate, I’ll be telling you about the next $800 Powerwall increase sometime in May.<\/p>\r\n There was a recent price hike in the US, but I was hoping we wouldn’t have one here because the Australian dollar has risen over 8% since the start of October, which is around when Tesla introduced their last increase.\u00a0 Just keeping the price constant while the Australian dollar rose to the 77 US cents it’s worth today increased the amount of money Tesla received for each Nevada-made Powerwall by over $900 Australian. Still, apparently, that wasn’t enough for Tesla, and they felt the need to bung an extra $800 onto the price.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n In the past, I’ve pointed out Tesla was pretty good when it came to offering products in Australia for around the same price they did in the US, but this is no longer the case.\u00a0 Going by today’s exchange rate, we are now charged $1,586 more than Yanks.\u00a0 Charging a little more is forgivable or even understandable, but this is just screwing us over.<\/p>\r\n I don’t know why Americans feel the need to charge Australians extra.\u00a0 So many old people have died in the US from COVID-19 you’d think they’d be flush with inheritance money, wouldn’t you?\u00a0 Or maybe they’re being hit with massive ICU bills, American style?<\/p>\r\n The US Tesla site gives a price of $8,200 US before incentives.\u00a0 In this case, they are Californian incentives, since I entered Bill Murray’s<\/a> address.<\/p><\/div>\r\n The Powerwall 2 made its debut back in February 2017.\u00a0 That’s over four years ago.\u00a0 It’s been around so long I’m about the only one left who bothers to include the “2” on the end.<\/p>\r\n According to the hype it was supposed to usher in an age of cheap home and business battery storage<\/a>.\u00a0 In 2016, serious forecasters at Morgan Stanley made a middle-of-the-road prediction<\/a> that 1 in 10 Australian households would have a battery system by 2020.\u00a0 They also made an optimistic forecast that was 1 one in 5.\u00a0 But this battery storage-filled future still hasn’t materialized<\/a> and instead it’s something like 1 in 30 at the moment.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n While not everyone huffed the battery hype as hard as Morgan Stanley, a lot of people — myself included — were hoping the launch of the Powerwall 2 would usher in an age of affordable home battery storage.\u00a0 Instead, we received the exact opposite\u00a0 — Powerwall price hikes:<\/p>\r\n As you can see from the chart above, there has been exactly one Powerwall 2 price decrease and four increases.\u00a0 I find the single price decrease reassuring because it means at least they understand prices can go down.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n The Powerwall 2 price has risen by almost 50% since its introduction.\u00a0 The $9,000 price for February 2017 is approximate as Tesla gave prices differently back then.\u00a0 But if we assume it’s a hard figure, then there has been:<\/p>\r\n This is not what was supposed to happen to home battery prices.\u00a0 For some reason, the Powerwall price keeps rising even when battery cells’ cost is decreasing dramatically.\u00a0 In 2018 the Powerwall price was increased $2,650 only three months after Elon Musk said Tesla would get battery cell prices down to $100 US per kilowatt-hour<\/a> by the end of that year.\u00a0 There was a $550 decrease in the middle of 2019, but that didn’t last.\u00a0 In his September 2020 Battery Day announcement<\/a>, Elon said Tesla would cut the cost of batteries in half by 2025 and in the four months since then the Powerwall price has been hiked twice for a $1,600 total increase. \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n When the Powerwall 2 was introduced, I thought its price was pitched low to scare off competition, and it would be a long time before we saw a price cut.\u00a0 I didn’t expect a 43% real price increase.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n So why does the price of the Powerwall keep going up when the price of battery cells keep going down?\u00a0<\/p>\r\n A friend suggested Elon needs money to pay for new rockets because the ones he used to have only worked well until they come in contact with the ground:<\/p>\r\n![\"Tesla](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/tesla_powerwall_pricy.png\")
Australians Screwed Over By Tesla<\/h2>\r\n
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Home Batteries Are Supposed To Fall In Price<\/h2>\r\n
![\"History](\"https:\/\/www.solarquotes.com.au\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/powerwall_price_hikes.jpg\")
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Why The Price Hikes?<\/h2>\r\n