Musk wants Tesla to make home heat pumps
Any Tesla fans expecting an auto announcement at Wednesday’s investor day were likely disappointed: The company shared little new information about forthcoming car models. But Elon Musk and his executive team did offer a tidbit of information about a different technology of interest to Tesla - heat pumps.
Musk opened the event at Tesla’s Austin, Texas, headquarters by laying out what the company believes is required to eliminate fossil fuels, from powering the grid with wind and solar to utilizing heat pumps, adding that Tesla may start making heat pumps for homes. “Earth will move to a sustainable energy economy,” Musk told the assembled crowd. “And it will happen in your lifetime.”
This is far from the first time Musk has talked about heat pumps, an electric heating technology that works a bit like a refrigerator in reverse. Heat pumps are already installed in Tesla’s Model Y SUV and in newer versions of the company’s other models. In 2020, Musk sang the praises of Tesla’s in-car heat pump, telling investors on an earnings call that it was key to the Model Y’s superior range. “This is especially excellent at lowtemperature driving. And the feedback we’re getting from customers who have received the Model Y thus far has been universally positive,” he said, adding that he was “extremely excited” to build a home heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system that could include particle filtration.
Home heat pumps, which could reduce global carbon dioxide emissions by at least 500 million tons by 2030, are having a bit of a moment. Installations exploded last year in Europe as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine led countries such as Poland to rapidly ramp up their heat pump programs. In the U.K., there’s a heat pump price war underway, prompted by two of the country’s biggest utilities competing to match the cost of a gas boiler.
In the U.S., the Inflation
Reduction Act offers incentives for households to install a heat pump, which is expected to boost the market. Demand is growing by 10% year-on-year, said Drew Baglino, Tesla’s senior vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, at Wednesday’s event. Baglino characterized heat pumps as key to the energy transition. “It’s about displacing all the fossil fuel heating that we can,” he said.
When used in electric vehicles, heat pumps can add to range because they’re more efficient than the resistive heating traditionally used to warm homes and cars. Rather than using one unit of power to make one unit of heat, they can provide two or three.