The competition between Tesla and GM is moving to another level, to the level of energy, Powerwall and Megapacks.
Today, General Motors announced that GM Energy would be building on the company’s existing Ultium Charge 360 public charging service with two new units — Ultium Home and Ultium Commercial — to provide clients with stationary storage batteries, solar panels, and hydrogen fuel cells. This is quite similar to Tesla Energy, which has long offered stationary storage and solar products.
“We’re getting into the entire ecosystem of energy management. Our competition in this space on the (automaker) side is really only Tesla, which is a strong energy management company. There are a lot of analogies you can draw with Tesla,” said GM Executive Travis Hester.
GM acknowledges that this is a new rivalry with Tesla.
“This is a new space for us. We have core competencies in vehicles and batteries, in cell chemistry and scale manufacturing. Put that together with our expertise in fuel cells, our dealer network, what we’ve been doing with OnStar and connectivity, and it seems like an obvious step for us,” Hester said.
Armen Hareyan is the founder and the Editor in Chief of Torque News. He founded TorqueNews.com in 2010, which since then has been publishing expert news and analysis about the automotive industry. He can be reached at Torque News Twitter, Facebok, Linkedin and Youtube.