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Tesla Powerwall smarter integration with vehicle charging hinted at in API code

Tesla Model 3 with Powerwall home battery story unit (Credit: Marco Papa/Teslarati)

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Recent observations from Tesla’s Powerwall API hint that the company’s electric cars will soon have a feature that will allow them to communicate better with the home battery system. With such a system in place, Tesla’s electric cars will not drain the Powerwall when the grid goes down.

The upcoming Powerwall and Tesla integration feature was first spotted by Model X owner and Reddit user u/cwiedmann.

“Looking through the data returned from the API, I see there’s now evidence of upcoming features for integrating Powerwalls and car charging as Elon mentioned. This appears to be support for preventing car charging from draining the batteries when the grid is down and maybe to allow the car to absorb surplus solar energy,” u/cwiedmann wrote on the r/TeslaMotors subreddit.

When the grid goes down, Tesla Powerwalls can meet the energy demands of a home, including charging an electric car like the Model 3, Model X, or Model S. That being said, there’s a big room for improvement especially when it comes to how a Tesla vehicle communicates with the home battery system. Tesla’s electric cars have massive battery packs after all, and they can drain an off-grid Powerwall if left unattended.

This appears to have happened in May 2019 to Tesla owner Erik Strait, who also runs the YouTube channel DӔrik. Strait brought up the Powerwall issue they encountered in Colorado and suggested features that may come handy to consumers, such as a setting that allows the home battery system to prevent cars charging when they are off the grid. Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded with a brief “Coming soon.”

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Elon Musk posted his response to the Tesla owner-enthusiast last May, and there have been few updates on the feature since. Nevertheless, references to the feature in the Powerwall’s API today suggests that the home battery-electric vehicle integration may be coming sooner than expected. How the functionality will be rolled out remains to be seen too, but there’s a good chance that Tesla may introduce the feature through an over-the-air update, similar to how the company activates “Storm Watch” for Powerwall-equipped homes located in areas that are facing natural disasters.

Ultimately, the upcoming Powerwall feature shows that Tesla is making a lot of headway in integrating key features of its energy products and its electric cars. This ecosystem could ultimately encourage buyers of Tesla’s electric cars to adopt the company’s energy and battery storage products too, similar to how Apple has encouraged customers to purchase devices within its product line due to their feature integration.

These recent observations on the Powerwall API also invoke some thoughts on a feature that was mentioned by Elon Musk back in 2018. In a tweet then, Musk noted that it may be worth revisiting the idea of using its cars as batteries that output power, similar to a V2G (vehicle-to-grid) system. Tesla does seem to be exploring this idea recently, as hinted at by the Cybertruck’s capability to use its massive battery pack to power tools from its onboard outlets.

Teslarati will update you once the Powerwall-Tesla electric vehicle integration feature goes live. For now, this is a welcome development so the habit of “always be charging” does not lead one to a home without power. But of course, there’s always Camp Mode just in case.

Upcoming Powerwall/Vehicle Integration API Leaks from r/teslamotors

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A curious soul who keeps wondering how Elon Musk, Tesla, electric cars, and clean energy technologies will shape the future, or do we really need to escape to Mars.

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Elon Musk’s X will start using a Tesla-like software update strategy

The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.

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Ministério Das Comunicações, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk’s social media platform X will adopt a Tesla-esque approach to software updates for its algorithm.

The initiative seems designed to accelerate updates to the social media platform, while maintaining maximum transparency.

X’s updates to its updates

As per Musk in a post on X, the social media company will be making a new algorithm to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users. These updates would then be repeated every four weeks. 

“We will make the new 𝕏 algorithm, including all code used to determine what organic and advertising posts are recommended to users, open source in 7 days. This will be repeated every 4 weeks, with comprehensive developer notes, to help you understand what changed,” Musk wrote in his post.

The initiative somewhat mirrors Tesla’s over-the-air update model, where vehicle software is regularly refined and pushed to users with detailed release notes. This should allow users to better understand the details of X’s every update and foster a healthy feedback loop for the social media platform.

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xAI and X

X, formerly Twitter, has been acquired by Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI last year. Since then, xAI has seen a rapid rise in valuation. Following the company’s the company’s upsized $20 billion Series E funding round, estimates now suggest that xAI is worth tens about $230 to $235 billion. That’s several times larger than Tesla when Elon Musk received his controversial 2018 CEO Performance Award. 

As per xAI, the Series E funding round attracted a diverse group of investors, including Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity Management & Research Company, Qatar Investment Authority, MGX, and Baron Capital Group, among others. Strategic partners NVIDIA and Cisco Investments also continued support for building the world’s largest GPU clusters.

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Tesla FSD Supervised wins MotorTrend’s Best Driver Assistance Award

The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system.

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Credit: Grok Imagine

Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised) system has been named the best driver-assistance technology on the market, earning top honors at the 2026 MotorTrend Best Tech Awards

The decision marks a notable reversal for the publication from prior years, with judges citing major real-world improvements that pushed Tesla’s latest FSD software ahead of every competing ADAS system. And it wasn’t even close. 

MotorTrend reverses course

MotorTrend awarded Tesla FSD (Supervised) its 2026 Best Tech Driver Assistance title after extensive testing of the latest v14 software. The publication acknowledged that it had previously criticized earlier versions of FSD for erratic behavior and near-miss incidents, ultimately favoring rivals such as GM’s Super Cruise in earlier evaluations.

According to MotorTrend, the newest iteration of FSD resolved many of those shortcomings. Testers said v14 showed far smoother behavior in complex urban scenarios, including unprotected left turns, traffic circles, emergency vehicles, and dense city streets. While the system still requires constant driver supervision, judges concluded that no other advanced driver-assistance system currently matches its breadth of capability.

Unlike rival systems that rely on combinations of cameras, radar, lidar, and mapped highways, Tesla’s FSD operates using a camera-only approach and is capable of driving on city streets, rural roads, and freeways. MotorTrend stated that pure utility, the ability to handle nearly all road types, ultimately separated FSD from competitors like Ford BlueCruise, GM Super Cruise, and BMW’s Highway Assistant.

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High cost and high capability

MotorTrend also addressed FSD’s pricing, which remains significantly higher than rival systems. Tesla currently charges $8,000 for a one-time purchase or $99 per month for a subscription, compared with far lower upfront and subscription costs from other automakers. The publication noted that the premium is justified given FSD’s unmatched scope and continuous software evolution.

Safety remained a central focus of the evaluation. While testers reported collision-free operation over thousands of miles, they noted ongoing concerns around FSD’s configurable driving modes, including options that allow aggressive driving and speeds beyond posted limits. MotorTrend emphasized that, like all Level 2 systems, FSD still depends on a fully attentive human driver at all times.

Despite those caveats, the publication concluded that Tesla’s rapid software progress fundamentally reshaped the competitive landscape. For drivers seeking the most capable hands-on driver-assistance system available today, MotorTrend concluded Tesla FSD (Supervised) now stands alone at the top.

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Elon Musk’s Grokipedia surges to 5.6M articles, almost 79% of English Wikipedia

The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago.

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UK Government, CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Elon Musk’s Grokipedia has grown to an impressive 5,615,201 articles as of today, closing in on 79% of the English Wikipedia’s current total of 7,119,376 articles. 

The explosive growth marks a major milestone for the AI-powered online encyclopedia, which was launched by Elon Musk’s xAI just months ago. Needless to say, it would only be a matter of time before Grokipedia exceeds English Wikipedia in sheer volume.

Grokipedia’s rapid growth

xAI’s vision for Grokipedia emphasizes neutrality, while Grok’s reasoning capabilities allow for fast drafting and fact-checking. When Elon Musk announced the initiative in late September 2025, he noted that Grokipedia would be an improvement to Wikipedia because it would be designed to avoid bias. 

At the time, Musk noted that Grokipedia “is a necessary step towards the xAI goal of understanding the Universe.”

Grokipedia was launched in late October, and while xAI was careful to list it only as Version 0.1 at the time, the online encyclopedia immediately earned praise. Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger highlighted the project’s innovative approach, noting how it leverages AI to fill knowledge gaps and enable rapid updates. Netizens also observed how Grokipedia tends to present articles in a more objective manner compared to Wikipedia, which is edited by humans.

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Elon Musk’s ambitious plans

With 5,615,201 total articles, Grokipedia has now grown to almost 79% of English Wikipedia’s article base. This is incredibly quick, though Grokipedia remains text-only for now. xAI, for its part, has now updated the online encyclopedia’s iteration to v0.2. 

Elon Musk has shared bold ideas for Grokipedia, including sending a record of the entire knowledge base to space as part of xAI’s mission to preserve and expand human understanding. At some point, Musk stated that Grokipedia will be renamed to Encyclopedia Galactica, and it will be sent to the cosmos

“When Grokipedia is good enough (long way to go), we will change the name to Encyclopedia Galactica. It will be an open source distillation of all knowledge, including audio, images and video. Join xAI to help build the sci-fi version of the Library of Alexandria!” Musk wrote, adding in a later post that “Copies will be etched in stone and sent to the Moon, Mars and beyond. This time, it will not be lost.”

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