Elon Musk announced that Tesla started production of what he has now called “Powerwall 2 Plus” back in November of last year.

Leave it to Tesla to launch a new product and not tell anyone about it for six months.

The Powerwall 2 was introduced back in 2016, and it hasn’t been updated much since its release.

Last week, we reported on Tesla CEO Elon Musk discussing a significant power capacity increase for the home battery pack.

The CEO said that Tesla would unlock the capacity through a software update, but he didn’t elaborate on an actual production date cutoff for the new product.

Now during the conference call following Tesla’s Q1 2021 financial results, Musk confirmed that they started production of the new version “roughly in November of last year”:

“It’s actually ‘Powerwall 2 Plus’, if you will. The plus refers to a higher peak power capability. So basically, all Powerwalls made since roughly November of last year have a lot more peak power capability than the specification on the website. They have about twice the power capability roughly.”

Like the use of ‘”Plus” in the Model 3 Standard Range Plus, it looks like Tesla is using a similar naming scheme to note the change in capacity of the new Powerwall.

Tesla currently advertises the Powerwall 2’s power capacity at 7 kW peak and 5 kW continuous, and now they are talking about Powerwall 2 Plus having roughly twice that capacity.

During the call, Musk also elaborated on Tesla’s recent move to only sell Powerwalls with solar installations and vice versa:

“The difficulty of the installation will be much less. It will be much easier because the power from the solar roof, Solarglass Roof or the solar panels, will only ever go directly into the Powerwall. And the Powerwall will only ever go between the utility and the main power panel of the house, which means you never need to touch the main circuit breakers of the house.”

The CEO continued:

“Effectively, almost every house, therefore, looks the same electrically instead of being a unique work of art and requiring exceptional ability to rewire the main panel. So this is extremely important for scalability. It’s the only way to do it, really. And this also means that every solar and Powerwall installation at a house, or whatever the case may be, will be its own utility.”

This is getting Tesla one step closer to Musk’s vision of “Tesla Energy becoming a distributed global utility.”

Tesla waited for its Q1 2021 earnings call to finally address the fatal crash that killed two men in Texas. According to Lars Moravy, Tesla’s vice president for Vehicle Engineering, the information that there was no one in the driver’s seat that came from authorities at the crash site would not stand against the deformed steering wheel in the Model S.

Moravy said Tesla “worked directly with the local authorities, NTSB and NHTSA” and came to some conclusions regarding that crash. The first one was “that Autosteer did not and could not engage on the road condition as it was designed.” Despite that, the “adaptive cruise control only engaged when a driver was buckled in about 5 mph,” and “it only accelerated to 30 mph with the distance before the car crashed.” You can listen to him in the recording below.

You will also hear that the “adaptive cruise control disengaged the car fully to complete to a stop when the driver's seatbelt was unbuckled.” That suggests the ACC was activated, accelerated the car to 30 mph, and was deactivated when the seat belt was unbuckled. According to Moravy, “all seatbelts post-crash were found to be unbuckled.”

At this point in the recording, the Tesla VP reveals the most important element to deny the vehicle did not have anyone in the driver’s seat, as authorities reported. According to Moravy, “the steering wheel was indeed deformed, leading to a likelihood that someone was in the driver's seat at the time of the crash.” The theory is that the steering wheel deformed when the unbuckled driver hit it.

To be completely fair to Tesla and Elon Musk, it's probably impossible to develop a software and hardware system that is 100 percent foolproof against all exploits.



If it weren't, then things like antivirus software and cybersecurity wouldn't have to exist because our computers would be made impenetrable from the factory. Yet not only do they exist, but they also require periodic updates to remain at least marginally relevant, which is to say strong enough to keep the rookie hackers at bay.

It's the same with the Autopilot. Tesla does employ a few safeguards that somebody within the company must have considered to be enough at some point, but time and time again, clips of people abusing the driver's aid suite surface on the web - that's if they don't make the news. And when that happens, you immediately think of all the instances that take place without anyone knowing because not everybody is dumb enough to film themselves committing a traffic violation and posting it online.

Well, this particular person didn't do that, but they still ended up on YouTube thanks to another driver that passed by and decided to make the Autopilot abuser famous. Not that he wasn't already, having featured on Reddit only days before while lying in the back seat and providing input to the steering wheel with his feet. This second time, he just sat and stared at the person filming him, presumably pretty proud of his accomplishment.

The uploader goes out of their way to state that "there is nothing wrong with Tesla AP" and that it's the driver assistance system that's being abused. We agree completely with the second part of the disclaimer, and while it's not Tesla's fault people are going out of their way to find new ways of tricking Autopilot while they slip out of the driver's seat, it should be its job to make life harder for these people.

Some voices say it's the same as putting the car in "D" and placing a rock over the throttle pedal - are the rest of the manufacturers doing anything to prevent owners from doing that? No, because it's not the same thing at all. Everyone in their right mind knows what would happen if they did that, and how quickly the aftermath would follow.

With the Autopilot (more particularly the $10,000 Full Self-Driving suite), they're told the car can drive on its own and it's just the regulations that are still preventing a full unlocking of the technology. What's more, a driver can activate the system and see for themselves that it's working, gathering some first-hand confidence into the system. The more they do it, the less relevant Tesla's message urging them to always remain alert and able to resume control becomes.

All things considered, we'd like to know this: why don't we see clips of people doing something similar in cars from other brands? Is their technology really too far behind? We sincerely doubt that, especially out on highways, where traffic is a lot less unpredictable. So maybe there are other reasons.

Maybe these companies aren't so desperate to be the industry's technology leaders, placing more importance on keeping an unblemished image. Well, maybe "unblemished" is too high of an ask for most traditional carmakers (they've all done something regrettable in the past), but at least they're striving not to add any more stains. Instead, they're waiting for the legislation to fall into place before presenting their systems (with some of them being already pretty advanced) as anything more than advanced driver's aid suites or talking about full autonomy in any other tense than the future. They prefer to seem more backward than to allow their customers to take advantage of these features.

Whoever says Tesla can't do anything to make it harder for these people to do stuff like this is probably not aware of how contradicting the whole situation is. Are we really to believe that a company employing the same minds who have allegedly cracked the self-driving problem can't come up with a few stronger safeguards that would keep its users from abusing the system? Or is this just another example of "every publicity is good publicity?" We'd hate to think Tesla could be so cynical, especially since people can lose their lives as a result, and not just the ones asking for it.