Who Would Be Interested In Tesla's Home Battery?

Tesla Motors Inc's TSLA Powerwall battery appears to be living up to expectations. Some investors are so excited that they say the first quarter results no longer matter. But what about the Tesla motorcycle that some analysts have been fantasizing about?

"I think for a motorcycle, we're probably at least five years from that going mainstream, maybe three, for motorcycles to be where Tesla is today," Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, told Benzinga. "Where you would see [them] up in frigid Michigan or something like that."

Moorhead was a firm believer in the Powerwall rumors. He expected the company to enter the home battery space but theorized that an incredibly fast motorcycle could also be in the works.

"There is a finite amount of resources to make batteries," said Moorhead. "All of this has to do with just that. Like a semiconductor company, you have to build factories to build these things. The more mainstream that something from Tesla is, the more you know they have a grip on how to make a lot of batteries."

Moorhead believes this limitation -- the inability to crank out a large number of high-quality batteries -- has throttled Tesla's growth.

"That's really what needs to happen to get into the mainstream -- we need to have a lot of these battery factories out there that just aren't built," he added.

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Multiple Paths To Success

Over time, Moorhead thinks Tesla could do very well in the home battery market.

"First of all, you do have a certain sector of the population that really believes that this type of energy is the cleanest type of energy you can have," he explained. "Even though you can have coal-burning flats creating electricity, there are groups of people that want solar."

These are some of the same people that gravitated toward electric cars.

"And then you have people out there who really want the latest cool thing, the latest cool type of technology, that I think (in their head) can justify the investment by saying, 'Hey, I've got the latest new thing, but I can save on electricity by using during peak and buying during non-peak,'" Moorhead added.

He noted that there are fewer tests and certifications that are required to put something in the home versus the tests and requirements for putting an automobile on the highway. He thinks Tesla could "go global" with this technology.

"There are very wealthy people that are in geographies that have brownouts," Moorhead concluded. "The Capital of Mumbai is an example. Continual brownouts and blackouts [occur] because the infrastructure is not where it needs to be. This is a solution to that in that. Switch over to battery power and you have a continuous power."

Disclosure: At the time of this writing, Louis Bedigian had no position in the equities mentioned in this report.