This seems like an awfully niche case, no? How often does someone lose power at home for days, while also having a nearby and accessible charging station that stays functional the whole time? Most of the disasters I'm aware of people either get their power back in a short enough amount of time that they can use a normal generator for the gap, or things are bad and widespread enough that they aren't driving down the street to recharge their vehicle.

Another way to view this is that driving a cybertruck every day is quite wasteful (no different than driving a full size gas pickup every day). One recharge cycle in a cybertruck uses enough energy to power a typical home for 8 days, 130kWh. If you aren’t doing truck things with it, it’s better to drive a more efficient EV or hybrid car. It uses almost twice as much Wh per mile compared to a model Y.

I think this is why these EV trucks don’t do well (ford also cancelled the F150 lightning). For truck things, they aren’t particularly capable (you’d get less than 100 miles towing). For daily driving duty, a car or small suv is much more efficient. You can power your home during a storm from most EVs these days, you’d just have to top it up more often

Battery cost per kwh is way cheaper for buying them in a car than a power wall or similar system for many vehicles.

For years Tesla didn't let you know use the battery in the car this way because they made money selling power walls. Then they added the inverter as part of selling that thing.

Multiple other cars have it and someone now sells an inverter that works on old teslas too

This is now a feature of most new Tesla vehicles:

https://www.tesla.com/powershare/#vehicles

> Powershare allows you to draw power directly from your compatible Tesla vehicle to power your devices, your home or the grid.

> Powershare is currently available for all Cybertruck vehicles, and all new Model 3 and Model Y2 vehicles ordered on October 1, 2026 or later.

> To verify if your vehicle has Powershare, navigate to ‘Software’ > ‘Additional Vehicle Info’ > ‘Powershare Support: Enabled’ on your vehicle touchscreen.

I ran the fridges and essentials with my Ioniq 5 the last time there was an extended power loss.

I don't think the residential power generator is needed anymore if you have an electric car.

I camped in a yurt in rural Maine last fall on a motorbiking trip. Needed to keep my phone charged for nav; woke up to find it hadn't charged all the way.

Went looking for the campground host and bumped into another camper, who was pissed the power went out. "Don't worry though - if you need to charge something, you can put it in my truck."

Ended up on a phone charging expedition that landed me in a local library for the first time since I was a child.

Came back and met the host: "Sorry about the power last night - some dumbass tried to charge his truck and tripped the breaker to the whole campground."

> but the emergency prepper in me

A friend who was in the Marines bought this point up along with another good one. (Bit of paraphrasing here) "It's the only bullet proof vehicle that's stock and acts like a giant battery in a blackout. As ugly as it is, it offers a lot of personal protection that people actually want and NEED depending on who they are and where they live. There are a lot of wealthy people who are buying them just for the fact that it's bullet proof."

The now defunct fully electric Ford F150 Lightning also had the feature.

This is a pretty common feature in High capacity cars.

Even my mid-range BYD came with power strip attachment so you run basic electrical appliance with it.

This is nothing specific to the CyberTruck; 123 kWh is a lot of battery but a better use would be to add home solar and then you're completely self-sufficient in addition to saving tons of money.

Of course there are two issues that are completely solveable if we had reasonable governance:

1. Adopting an Australia-style solar installation regulation and permitting scheme, which is literally 1/5th tho cost of the US method, and pays their tradespeolpe higher salaries than US workers get

2. Allowing EVs to feed back into the grid. This is something that naysayers would never be useful because nobody would ever want to waste battery cycles on their home. Which of course has always been nonsense. Don't buy EVs without this basic capability, IMHO.

There are cheaper, more reliable, and easily repaired generators though.

It's worth noting that there are several other (nearly objectively better) EVs on the market with larger battery capacity than the CT and have V2H/Powershare tech.

If you live in a sunny area, it's much cheaper to install solar with a hybrid inverter (like a Sol-Ark) with some batteries, and a generator for the extended outages. The cybertruck's battery is 123 kwh, whereas a gallon of gas contains approx 33 kwh of energy. A mere 5 gallon container of gas is more energy than the entire cybertruck.

> They may be ugly, but the emergency prepper in me always wanted one after hearing that story

If all you're after is the V2L feature, you can get it for much cheaper: for 16% of the price of a Cybertruck, you can get 86% of the battery capacity (about 8 powerwalls) by buying a used Fisker Ocean Extreme with a 107kWh battery, vs. the cybertruck's 123kWh

This works for the wealthy that can afford it, but would it be better to be press for a better grid for everyone instead? It amazes me how individualistic and wasteful the usa is.

Ford had EV trucks that could do that before Tesla did.

Interesting, This reminds me a V2V energy transportation. There was a study in the past to investigate how could it be designed in the public transportation:

https://digitalcommons.lib.uconn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...

Still imaginary though. (how come vehicles can exchange energy quickly?)

may I ask why would it not be more sensible to have solar panels, battery and generators? Is that not a viable project? I'm consodering that for myself, never thought on a cybertruck

I used to have an inverter I installed in my vehicle, mainly to run powertools, and brew hot cocoa during stargazing events. During the great North American power outage in the early 2000's, I ran an extension cord into the house and ran some basic stuff off it (I recall us being the only ones around who could watch TV to keep up with the news). It was only 1200W (though had an extra deep cycle battery hooked up), but helped enough for a few vitals.

What appliances exactly did the house have? And does it last couple of days even for appliances with compressors and heating coils? If it did that then thats pretty impressive! And your friend is a genius

My Renault Scenic E-Tech can also do V2H, it is not specific to Cybertruck.

If that’s the only thing you care about you can DIY (or buy dedicated battery backup systems) with 10x more capacity for the same price. With heavier but cheaper Na-ion batteries in the horizon near future backup systems will be even better

Ford did the same thing, but that truck was built during the height of parts shortages.

Ford came in and bought up all of the parts from our suppliers and I had to qual random suppliers for weeks. Even at the time, I was thinking there is too much disparity and this will haunt us for years.

We were a bit more agile and I made a lot of kernel hacks to compensate.

Ford didn’t fare better for all their choices. Recalls galore. Honestly, they made my life hell so fuck em.

On to the truck, they had a proprietary charger and power wall solution but it could run the house for days.

The requirements for a home battery are vastly different than for a vehicle. For home, size and weight matter much less and capacity and discharge matter much more. Vehicle batteries would nearly always be the wrong solution to power a home.

The F150 hybrid is/was also supposed to be really good for this, and when the battery ran down, the engine would switch on and recharge it. So, you were not dependent on a super charger. All you needed is a working gas station. (This is based on an old video from Alex on Autos). So, you could buy a vehicle that is both cheaper and doesn't look like a dumpster and still be able to do this.

Battery capacity is just one side of the equation. You also need a strong output capacity otherwise you won't much. Also if you are to inject current in your network like that, then you need at least a source inverter to isolate yourself from the grid, otherwise it would most likely be illegal and very dangerous for technicians and neighbors. Also

I just have a gas heater, gas stove, and some spare 9kg cylinders of LPG. I can even hook them up to my gas hot water if we're desperate for a shower.

Huh. That's pretty cool! Now I'm wondering about the potential to do this with any EV. Something to research.

The Ford F-150 Lightning has always been able to do that, way before the Tesla cars enabled vehicle-to-load (V2L).

Delivering power back to the net is a standard feature on most EVs now.

Are the battery compartments water proof? We got hit by a hurricane a few years ago, and a few nearby teslas caught on fire from the floodwaters, torching people's houses.

that is not the only car who can reverse-charge the house. All EVs are theoretically capable of it, given proper power switching algorithm. (the hardware is already there, just how the four switches open/close to reverse the energy flowing direction.)

I've always like their look, and I feel the hate on them is more due to Elon and it being a Tesla which is fair.

Weird looking truck, glad they took the risk

This is a feature on many new electric vehicles (such as the Kia EV 9). The obstacle is often the power company, which may require modifying your system to enable this.

Can you do this with other normal EVs? I assume they'd have lower capacity, but just getting some power for your fridge, wifi, and chargers might be worth.

Did Ford have Truck that did that and I am pretty sure a new and improved version is coming with the new Phantom.

I believe this but I'm curious how this works specifically? Did the home already have a transfer switch of some kind?

What are the chances that the supercharger station even has power after a hurricane? You want something that is already on the property. I've had roads blocked by fallen trees for days after a windstorm event.

If you are concerned about riding through a 14 day+ event you need a generator. Even a fully off-grid solar / wind setup could be compromised in these kinds of storms. I've seen entire roofs cleaned off by a <100mph storm. Anything not bolted down to a concrete slab cannot be depended on.

Many EVs can do the same thing.

It’s unclear to me how a vehicle battery can be 9-10x the size of a house battery, be used as a house battery, include an highway safe cabin, motors and wheels and only cost 4x what a single home battery costs. Oh, and at least Kia rates their battery warranty based on miles driven, so using it as a home battery does not impact any 10-year capacity guarantees.

AI tells me they are completely different though, so I must be missing something.

I think "recycling" cybertrucks in this manner, basically to reuse their batteries, may give them a more practical afterlife then when they were a truck.

It's a cool car. I'm glad it exists. All SUVs look almost identical. I'm glad it was different, not for everyone but it was an attempt to make something innovative in a very stale market.

It's exhausting reading these kinds of articles from a tech publication none the less. It's just so negative. Here is a summary of paragraphs:

Cybertruck is ceasing production

Here's a mean tweet from some X account with 2,649 followers: "Fuck that shitbox"

The car rusts sometimes

Truck sold very few units

Even with low sales they're still going down

Wildly unpopular with design flaws

Mention embarrassing demo from 7 years ago

It just goes on, truly exhausting.

https://www.roadandtrack.com/car-culture/a36715409/why-does-...

You can do the same thing with an f150 or Silverado ev and won’t have to drive around in a discontinued rolling doorstop.

https://www.f150lightningforum.com/forum/threads/franklinwh-...

https://gmenergy.gm.com/vehicle-to-home

> They may be ugly, but the emergency prepper in me always wanted one after hearing that story.

The cybertruck is $70k, which in a 14-day power outage is $5000 a day.

There are cheaper options to weather such a storm. Like flying first class to New York, getting a limo to the Central Park Ritz-Carlton and spending 14 days being waited on hand and foot.

Counterpoint: I live off-grid and am thankful I can just power my house with batteries instead of a massive car that looks like a Dumpster

The F-150 powerboost is perfect for this and has existed before the Cybertruck. https://www.nucarfordtilton.com/f-150-powerboost-explained/ big bonus, you get a real truck with it too. That can do real truck things.

I agree that it’s cool, but is it practical? If your goal is to power your house, you can buy a whole-house backup generator for about 1/12th of the cost of a cybertruck.

Are you prepared if a meteor hits and wipes out the grid ?