Also very important: the cybertruck is not the only vehicle capable of doing that (the keywords are V2H and V2L, V2H is the more convenient — the car just plugs into the mains and acts as a house battery — while V2L means you have to go and plug your stuff to the car's mains outputs directly)

> 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

TBF an EV car has an absolutely massive battery relative to the electric consumption of a house, unless you're using resistive heating all around. Especially if you ration use.

Most people (like me) don't have generators. But when I hear "oh, BTW this car can be a used as a generator for 48-72 hours in a power outage", that's a nice little selling point that might put me over the edge if i'm otherwise considering the car. No, this doesn't solve for Hurricane Katrina. But it does solve for a nor'easter.

This is exactly what I do. My cabin is in a rural area that gets a lot of power outages, and it also happens to be < 10 min away from a supercharger. When I was getting quotes for a home battery backup system, every other option was astronomically more expensive than the cybertruck. I don’t know why adding wheels to the battery pack makes it a lot less expensive but I’m not complaining. It’s good to have an extra vehicle I can use in the event of an emergency as well.

First, 'nearby' can be a 1 hr drive and still be worth it to commute every few days. Second, tornadoes, storms, and floods have exactly that pattern where damage can be block by block.

But it is still cheaper to stockpile some generators and gas than stockpile a cybertruck. If there's an EV charging station up within a 1 hr drive, gas stations are also going to be up.

Even if you can’t easily recharge, it’s a great way to power your home for a few days. It’s arguably a very cost-efficient home backup solution, assuming you were already in the market for an EV.

A Cybertruck has nearly 10x the battery capacity of a single Powerwall, and to buy that much Powerwall capacity would cost at least as much as a Cybertruck. Even a Tesla Model 3 (which now supports home backup) is over 5x Powerwalls.

You still have to pay to install home backup support on your home’s breaker (at least $10k), but you don’t need anywhere near the amount of very expensive supplemental home batteries.

Also, even an EV with a 120V outlet and no home backup support could be very useful for recharging a portable battery bank.

During a “power cut” there is usually reduced capacity on the grid, not zero capacity. They typically cut power to homes while keeping power on for business. The homes get power on a rolling blackout, so they have power for a few hours per day.

I expect that the charging station will be in an industrial park with an industrial power supply.

Power outages at least where the live are a fairly common occurrence (overhead local power lines get taken out by trees if there is a big blow), power is usually restored in 1-48hrs. A lot of people have backups (generators or batteries) but those are fairly expensive when you amortize them against cost / hour of outage. Having that backup up power available at no incremental cost is pretty nice to have.

This is one of those things that happens in rural areas, "the city" (which is not actually a city in any sense but the legal one) gets power on in a day or so but your neighborhood 10 miles away doesn't get power for another week because the population density is something like 50/sq mile at most. And that's just for the people in actual neighborhoods, if you're on a farm or something where the nearest neighbor is a mile down the highway I don't even know how long it takes them to fix your power lines.

In about 25 years, I've twice been out twice for multiple days and one of those was in summer which was a nuisance rather than a potential really serious problem. (Worst case, I buy ice for coolers and maybe need to toss some food.) But I live just off a (major) country road so I'm probably pretty high on the power restoration schedule.

The whole point of prepping is to prepare for the unlikely events though.

If you can choose between a truck that can’t power your house and a truck that can, prepper mentality is to choose the one that can.

That sort of thing happens all the time. All it takes is, say, a big fallen tree in the wrong spot. Its entirely possible for just your road to be SOL for days, if the local utility is otherwise completely swamped by bigger issues from whatever disaster is going on.

Also you can get that charging station fitted to your house aka solar panels. I've been "off grid" I.e. no import for weeks

In places like Florida its absolutely something that would not be considered niche.

Greetings from Northern California! Multi-day power outages are not at all uncommon (though I've never seen 14 days). We had one about a month ago. Most people just have generators, but if you wanted to use a Cybertruck instead, the nearest superchargers are one hour away and do not go offline when we lose power.

Not niche at all. Loss of power for days is common in areas of strong storms with above ground power lines. States frequented by hurricanes and strong storms can experience days to weeks without power.

Ford has also marketed their hybrid F150 as being able to power home appliances for several years.

I live off grid in Sweden all year round with solar and an EV as battery to power everything except heating which I do with wood from my own property.

I'd have animals too but society is still stable enough to provide me with food.

Living in Ukraine, I can tell you it's not niche here. Most homeowners without power walls already consider buying an EV because you also get to drive it to an area that has electricity at the time.

Preppers are just about as niche as you can get; they're still a valid customer prototype! I'm sure more than a few solar home owners chose it as a PowerWall.

At 6000lbs+ it's a section 179 write off; if you combine that with some of the previous incentives the car was not that expensive to the right population.

> This seems like an awfully niche case, no?

Not really. Some areas in California have multiple PSPS outages during fire season. Many people have gotten gas generators or powerwalls to deal with it, but using your EV would be ideal.

If you're already committed to owning a bigass $100K electric truck this is an inarguably awesome side benefit. It's a truck, so... you have a few hundred miles of range. Slightly better than "down the street."

But for the other 99.99% of humanity, there are certainly more cost-effective ways. A portable power station and solar panels are probably the better move unless you have some really massive power needs.

(Admittedly, a nuclear winter reduces the effectiveness of those solar panels somewhat)

Actually, if my car worked as a whole-house UPS and base smart battery (charging at night when power is cheap, drawing during day when it's expensive), that's a pretty nice value-add for a vehicle purchase.

Doesn't make sense for what they are charging for it. But still!

Yeah... even powerwalls and equivalent don't seem to be a good just-in-case solution. A gas generator costs 5% for the same capacity, and you can just go get some extra gas when the storm comes. I'm all for electrification, but after doing the math, it doesn't work for this particular corner case.

Other commenters are pointing out places where it isn’t that niche, but I just want to call out that there’s a whole cottage industry for preppers that would eat this up. I would consider a 30-pound bucket full of shelf-stable Mac and cheese “pretty niche,” but it flew off the shelves at Costco.

I'm not sure it is. I've considered getting home batteries for power outages (due to fires), and frankly given the install cost, using a car is compelling. Not only do they have enormous batteries (a model 3 has a 57.5 kwh battery and can be acquired for 20k), but they can be driven to recharge every few days if need be.

Where I'm located, in most cases when there is an outage, neighboring areas do have power.

Specifically for my model 3, I've been considering tapping into the HV system manually to keep my Ecoflow battery topped up, but I wish there was a way to directly connect it.

>This seems like an awfully niche case, no?

No. It's like a generator except way more power and mobile. Rechargable via solar. So basically just a much better generator.

Also an american only case. But anyway trucks are not popular elsewhere, little sense to buy it

Well, with climate change and weather getting more extreme, it might happen more often...

pretty standard in honolulu actually. i lose power for 1-3 days on the regular, have to drive to town to do anything

I've got a friend who does it simply to fuck PG&E and avoid an electric bill. He has workplace charging, a Cybertruck, and a powerwall + Tesla solar setup at home. He drives his truck to work, fills up on electricity, drives it home at the end of the day, and uses it to power his house. Repeat the next day. The Cybertruck was cheaper than the 13 PowerWalls or whatever that's the equivalent battery capacity.

Actually no, and in fact almost all EVs are capable of powering a house for quite a while. It would be excellent if this was not just a Cybertruck-exclusive feature since here in the bay area we have shitty infrastructure too and power outages happen several times per winter.

I saw it happen during Katrina. Neighborhoods within an easy drive of each other where one had power, and the other not. Not to mention the fact that vehicle charging stations may well be prioritized to restore power.

It’s niche just because natural disasters are thankfully relatively rare, but I still think having good contingencies is worth it.

Fuck being seen in a cybertruck though.

My silicon valley neighborhood lost power for two days in 2025 starting on Christmas day.

In what universe is backup power a niche use case?

Ice storms in the Midwest can knock power out for several days in rural areas. Urban areas usually get brought back online sooner than the rural areas. A few years ago a bad one knocked out power at a friend’s house for three weeks.

Niche until it’s life/death unfortunately.

Not uncommon in parts of California where certain legs of the grid are shut down for high wind events. If you live in Pacifica, you might have your power out for 3 to 5 days, but there will be reliable power in San Francisco 20 minutes away.

An awful lot Elon’s products seem uniquely capable in extreme niche cases primarily caused by America‘s horrendous track record of maintaining, upgrading, and filling in traditional infrastructure.

Even outside of natural disasters, it's a very useful feature for people in the construction business and similar fields where mains power might not be always available.

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