WHY IT MATTERS: Digital Transformation

Think of the vehicle that will change urban transportation. If the image in your mind is not an electric bus, you’re thinking of the wrong vehicle. The electrification of the passenger vehicle has made headlines for good reason. Vehicles like the Tesla Model S and BMW i8 are beautiful and fast, and cars like the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf offer compelling value to commuters. But we’d be lucky if plug-in vehicles represent more than 5 percent of passenger vehicles sold in the United States over t

Storage of electricity in large quantities is reaching an inflection point, poised to give a big boost to renewables, to disrupt business models across the electrical industry, and to tap into a market that will eventually top many of tens of billions of dollars per year, and trillions of dollars cumulatively over the coming decades.

Elon Musk announced Tesla’s home / business battery today. tl;dr: It’ll get enthusiastic early adopters to buy. The economics are almost there to make it cost effective for a wide market. And within just a few years, it almost certainly will be cheap enough to be cost effective for a broad market. Not a game changer today, but a shot fired in an incredible energy storage disruption.