Mercedes-Benz Takes On Tesla With Home Battery

Tesla isn’t the only automaker interested in getting into the home battery market. Mercedes-Benz has unveiled a personal energy cell that, like Tesla’s Powerwall, uses giant batteries to store surplus power from your home’s solar panels and keep you off the conventional energy grid.

The system will accept up to eight 2.5kWh battery modules for a total capacity of 20kWh. Tesla, on the other hand, only offers two configurations for home use: a 7kWh system priced at $3,000 and a 10kWh variant that’ll set you back $3,500. Daimler will also offer an industrial version of its system like Tesla does with its Powerpack although it hasn’t yet revealed how much either system will sell for.

“Households with their own photovoltaic systems can thus buffer surplus solar power virtually free of any losses,” the carmaker said in a statement.

With Tesla’s unit already sold out through mid-2016, you may have little choice but to register for the Mercedes equivalent and wait until it ships in September.