Mercedes to sell home battery system in Oz

If you thought Tesla was the only car-maker getting serious about electric vehicles (EV) and the energy solutions required to keep them on the road, think again.

Mercedes-Benz Australia is about to make a big play for the hearts and minds of not just greenies and tech heads, but regular motorists who want their plug-in hybrid cars and EVs charged by green, zero-emissions energy – namely solar.

Mercedes-Benz Australia's Senior Manager of PR communications, David McCarthy, said vehicle electrification was one of the biggest challenges facing the automotive industry today and that Mercedes is gearing up to meet that challenge in September 2016, by selling its new home-installed battery packs.

"Storage batteries are [going to be] big and we're introducing [ours] to the Australian market in the next [third] quarter, and it'll be part of a package when we introduce our plug-in cars," he said.

Mercedes-Benz is readying three plug-in hybrid vehicles for the local market, which will launch in July 2016, backed up by the new home battery system.

Those vehicles include the C-Class (C 350e), GLE-Class (GLE 400e) and S-Class (S 500e), covering the mid-size car, large SUV and top-shelf limousine segments respectively.

"The cars will have a 30km all-electric range," says McCarthy, "and from next year the battery tech will improve, allowing for a 50km range, before the petrol engines chime in to increase range further."

With its home-installed battery charging system, a rival for Tesla's Powerwall, Benz is hoping to upset the EV status quo and make a big impact from the get-go with its battery solutions.

"It's a package with an electricity provider -- I'm not going tell you who it is yet, but they will also install solar panels and the storage batteries in your home," explained McCarthy.

One possible provider could be AGL, which already offers a flat rate charge for EV charging. Origin Energy is another contender, as it already has experience installing Telsa Powerwalls.

The Tesla Powerwall costs around $15,000 for a 7kWh (kiloWatt hour) system bundled with solar panels, inverter and labour, making it a larger capacity than the Mercedes' 2.5kWh offering.

That said, Benz' system can be stacked, allowing larger multiples, such as 5kWh and 10kWh and theoretically much, much more.

As a guide, the average Australian household uses around 30kWh of electricity per day.

Mercedes-Benz's home battery and solar panel solution could cost less than the Tesla solution for a basic set-up because of its smaller storage capacity, but the company is keeping mum on costings at this stage.

"I'm not going to say at the moment [how much it'll cost], but there'll be different versions," said the Benz spokesman.

"People want to recharge their plug-in cars with green energy. And I think there's a bit of misunderstanding about what green energy is in this country, and how much of it there is," he said, before tempering the comments with his belief that solar energy is well recognised as such.

Like rival energy storage solutions, the Benz system uses Lithium-ion batteries to store energy collected from the solar panels, which can then be used to charge the car's batteries. But the energy storage solutions go beyond filling up EVs.

"A customer who wants to buy a package can do so. Depending on how much you want [in kWh] it'll be enough to charge your car, or run your house too, or even feed back into the grid. So it depends what level you want to go to," explained McCarthy.

Although EV charging infrastructure in Australia lags behind many developed nations such as China, Europe and North America, which have fast-charge points at shopping centres, car parks and the like, battery systems installed in homes could lead the charge for a belated EV expansion in Australia.

And the next step in the technology, says the Benz exec, is even more tantalising.

"I think wireless charging is going to be an absolute game-changer. It's already happening. Cars are running around testing it.

"It does away with cables. You pull up and you're done. With levels of vehicle autonomy and self-parking, just get out the car and it'll go and park exactly where it needs to and begin charging."

When quizzed over lingering safety concerns around inductive charging, after a Nissan LEAF technician in Japan told motoring.com.au last year that a cat could be cooked if it crawled under a vehicle that was wirelessly charging, McCarthy japed: "Do you have a cat?"

"In all seriousness, there are challenges ahead but electric cars are going to have a big future."