Tesla Quietly Drops its 10kWh Powerwall

Elon Musk’s Tesla has quietly removed all mention of its 10kWh Powerwall home battery from its website and press kit, leaving the 6.4kWh model as the only version on sale, only a year after the pair were launched. Tesla has since admitted that the 10kWh iteration of the Powerwall has been discontinued.

“We have seen enormous interest in the Daily Powerwall worldwide,” Tesla told Greentech Media. “The Daily Powerwall supports daily use applications like solar self-consumption plus backup power applications, and can offer backup simply by modifying the way it is installed in a home. Due to the interest, we have decided to focus entirely on building and deploying the 7-kilowatt-hour Daily Powerwall at this time.”

Tesla’s 10kWh Powerwall, while a useful innovation, was significantly overpriced at $3,500, especially when compared with back-up generator options that can provide greater power output for around the same money.

“Even some of the deep cycling lead acid batteries offer 1,000 cycles and cost less than half of the $3,500 price tag for Tesla Powerwall,” Ravi Manghani, Senior Energy Storage Analyst at GTM Research, said. “For pure backup applications only providing 500 cycles, lead acid batteries or gensets are way more economical.”

The 10kWh Powerwall also failed to reap the benefits of California’s Self-Generation Incentive Program due its size, which meant that it did not meet the requisite five cycles-per-week threshold.

“In current discussions on SGIP program overhaul, it is very likely that stronger performance requirements may get added, which will make a 10-kilowatt-hour/500 cycles product outright ineligible (if cycled only once a week), or last only 2 years (if cycled every weekday for about 500 cycles over 2 years),” Manghani added. “In short, the market’s expectation is that for a $3,500 price tag, the product needs to have more than just 500 cycles (i.e., only backup capabilities).”