Elon Musk is still considering Tesla getting into the home HVAC business to leverage the work it has done on the HVAC system in its vehicles, which Musk is so proud of that he considers breaking his no-advertising rule.
Tesla has been putting a lot of effort to improve the air quality inside its electric cars, and it went as far as integrating a HEPA filter into its HVAC system inside some of its higher-end electric cars.
The filter can theoretically remove 99.97% of dust, pollen, mold, bacteria, and any airborne particles with a size of 0.3 microns (µm), and it’s adapted into an efficient HVAC system in order not to affect too negatively the range of its vehicles.
When announcing that Tesla is working on a software update to make the HVAC system quieter in the new Model S, CEO Elon Musk was asked on Twitter about Tesla making a home HVAC system:
“Oh man, home hvac that is super energy efficient, quiet & purifies the air would be great. We developed it for the car, but it can be scaled up for home use.”
It’s something that the CEO has been talking about for years and strongly hinted that Tesla was working on it at some point, but it now sounds like he is still pondering the idea.
Musk then went on his own little tweetstorm about Tesla’s air purification system.
He claimed that Tesla’s system is “literally 10X better than any other car” and even considers advertising the feature:
“Most people have no idea just how good the Tesla air purification system is. Literally 10X better than any other car. Maybe we should advertise informationally just so people know stuff like this exists.”
This would be significant since Musk has previously stated that he doesn’t like advertising and Tesla famously doesn’t buy any advertising spots.
Although, in this case, he specifies to “advertise informationally,” and it’s not clear what form that would take.
Electrek‘s take
Wouldn’t it be funny if Tesla’s first ad was not about the insane performance of its vehicles, how efficient they are, or the crazy high-tech features inside of them, like Autopilot, but instead about its HVAC system?
I think he might be overestimating how much people care about that.
Also, while you can tweet about it being “literally 10X better than any other car,” if that statement is in an ad, you better have strong evidence to back this up or you might find yourself in trouble with the FTC.
As for the Tesla home HVAC system, it’s certainly a product that would make sense in Tesla’s lineup since HVAC systems are big energy consumers and an efficient solution could be complementary to Tesla’s existing home energy products.
In previous comments, Elon almost made it sound like it was already in the works at Tesla, but more recent comments, including this one, make it sound like it hasn’t been greenlighted yet.
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Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek
