It is a nice dream. You catch the sun’s rays in photovoltaic panels on the roof. The resulting electricity is fed down to a large battery hanging on the wall in the garage. You plug your electric car in overnight and charge it for the next day’s commute.
This is the post-carbon future, as imagined by electric car and space entrepreneur Elon Musk. Last week he tried to hasten it into existence, with a proposal by his battery and electric carmaker Tesla Motors to buy solar power company SolarCity, a company of which he is also chairman.
There is a question of whether it makes sense to combine all these things in one company. Wall Street certainly is not convinced. But the timing of this proposed deal still highlights how close these sustainable energy technologies are to reaching the mass market. Mr Musk is probably getting ahead of himself but his vision is not far-fetched — provided government does not withdraw support for sustainable energy technologies too soon.