Many car manufacturers are now working on all-electric cars and they’re also trying to leverage their battery technology in order to gain a footing in the electric revolution that’s sweeping various industries. Tesla was one of the first car makers to do this when it launched Tesla Energy in 2015 and later came out with its Powerwall home battery pack. Mercedes-Benz did something similar last year but it has now decided to discontinue its home battery pack.
Mercedes-Benz parent company Daimler had launched its Mercedes-Benz Energy subsidiary last year which subsequently launched a home battery pack to compete with Tesla’s Powerwall but the company has now decided to kill the product.
Mercedes-Benz teamed up with Vivint for this product. It’s the biggest competitor to Tesla Energy in the United States. However, the program didn’t quite achieve the results that the company was hoping for. One reason for that is the fact that the company’s home battery pack was just too expensive.
The company’s battery pack was overengineered as it was a vehicle battery pack and it wasn’t developed to be a stationary home battery pack. “It’s not necessary to have a car battery at home: they don’t move, they don’t freeze. It’s overdesigned,” said a spokesperson for Mercedes-Benz.
The team that was working on this project in the United States will now move to other parts of the company’s operations, according to Mercedes-Benz.