Part of the bargain was that Tesla will be recycling the materials for these batteries when they are EoL. Until that actually happens, the battery only solves half the problem.

Sure. That seems like a kind of uncharitable way to put it though. It's possible that I'm reading in a tone that isn't there.

Building the first grid-scale battery bank, and having it succeed in smoothing out the delivery curve for an intermittent-heavy grid: that's a huge victory! It's a triumph really.

Insisting on the accountability and follow-through is important, sure. But that battery solves the whole problem we have right now, and will serve as a test case for solving the problem which it itself created for a decade down the road.

Maybe Elon will be broke by then, or living on Mars, or we'll all complete the Singularity and have chips in our head. My hope is that they just fulfill the contract. In any case there's no reason to show that kind of skepticism about something which can't have happened yet.